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Title: A Short History of England, Ireland and Scotland
Author: Mary Platt Parmele
Release Date: September 18, 2010 [EBook #33755]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND ***
Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: Magna Charta, 1215: King John submits to the Barons, and
signs the Great Charter of British Liberties.]
A SHORT HISTORY OF
ENGLAND, IRELAND
AND SCOTLAND
BY
MARY PLATT PARMELE
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1907
COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY
WILLIAM BEVERLEY HARISON
COPYRIGHT, 1898, 1900, 1906, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
PREFACE
Will the readers of this little work please bear in mind the
difficulties which must attend the painting of a very large picture,
with multitudinous characters and details, upon a very small canvas!
This book is mainly an attempt to trace to their sources some of the
currents which enter into the life of Great Britain to-day, and to
indicate the starting-points of some among the various
threads--legislative, judicial, social, etc.--which are gathered into
the imposing strand of English civilization in this closing nineteenth
century.
The reader will please observe that there seem to have been two things
most closely interwoven with the life of England--RELIGION and MONEY
have been the great evolutionary factors in her development.
It has been, first, the resistance of the people to the extortions of
money by the ruling class, and second, the violating of their religious
instincts, which has made nearly all that is vital in English history.
The lines upon which the government has developed to its present
constitutional form are chiefly lines of resistance to oppressive
enactments in these two matters. The dynastic and military history of
England, although picturesque and interesting, is really only a
narrative of the external causes which have impeded the nation's growth
toward its ideal of "the greatest possible good to the greatest
possible number."
The historic development of Ireland and Scotland, and the events which
have brought these two countries into organic union with England are,
of necessity, very briefly related.
M. P. P.
CONTENTS
_HISTORY OF ENGLAND_
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Ancient Britain--Cæsar's Invasion--Britain a Roman
Province--Boadicea--Lyndin or London--Roman Legions
Withdrawn--Angles and Saxons--Cerdic--Teutonic
Invasion--English Kingdoms Consolidated . . . . . . . . . . . 9
CHAPTER II.
Augustine--Edwin--Cædmon--Bæda--Alfred--Canute--Edward
the Confessor--Harold--William the Conqueror . . . . . . . . . 25
CHAPTER III.
"Gilds" and Boroughs--William II.--Crusades--Henry I.--Henry
II.--Becket's Death--Richard I.--John--Magna Charta . . . . . 40
CHAPTER IV.
Henry III.--Roger Bacon--First True Parliament--Edward
I.--Conquest of Wales--of Scotland--Edward II.--Edward
III.--Battle of Crécy--Richard II.--Wickliffe . . . . . . . . 51
CHAPTER V.
House of Lancaster--Henry IV.--Henry V.--Agincourt--Battle of
Orleans--Wars of the Roses--House of York--Edward IV.--Richard
III.--Henry VII.--Printing Introduced. . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
CHAPTER VI.
Henry VIII.--Wolsey--Reformation--Edward VI.--Mary . . . . . . . 73
CHAPTER VII.
Elizabeth--East India Company Chartered--Colonization of
Virginia--Flodden Field--Birth of Mary Stuart--Mary Stuart's
Death--Spanish Armada--Francis Bacon . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
CHAPTER VIII.
James I.--First New England Colony--Gunpowder Plot--Translation
of Bible--Charles I.--Archbishop Laud--John Hampden--_Petition
of Right_--Massachusetts Chartered--Earl Strafford--_Star
Chamber_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
CHAPTER IX.
Long Parliament--Death of Strafford and Laud--Oliver
Cromwell--Death of Charles I.--Long Parliament
Dispersed--Charles II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
CHAPTER X.
Act of Habeas Corpus--Death of Charles II.--Milton--Bunyan--James
II.--William and Mary--Battle of the Boyne . . . . . . . . . . 122
CHAPTER XI.
Anne--Marlborough--Battle of Blenheim--House of Hanover--George
I.--George II.--Walpole--British Dominion in India--Battle
of Quebec--John Wesley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
CHAPTER XII.
George III.--Stamp Act--Tax on Tea--American Independence
Acknowledged--Impeachment of Hastings--War of 1812--First
English Railway--George IV.--William IV.--Reform
Bill--Emancipation of the Slaves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
CHAPTER XIII.
Victoria--Famine in Ireland--War with Russia--Sepoy
Rebellion--Massacre at Cawnpore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
CHAPTER XIV.
Atlantic Cable--Daguerre's Discovery--First World's
Fair--Death of Albert--Suez Canal--Victoria Empress of
India--Disestablishment of Irish Branch of Church of
England--Present Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
CHAPTER XV
Death of Queen Victoria--Russo-Japanese War . . . . . . . . . . 191
_HISTORY OF IRELAND_
Pre-Christian Ireland--From Augustine to English Conquest--From
Henry II. to Elizabeth--From Elizabeth to William III. and
Mary--From William III. to Act of Union--From Act of Union
to death of Parnell--New Land Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
_HISTORY OF SCOTLAND_
Early Celtic Period--Period from Malcolm III. to Robert
Bruce--From Bruce to James I.--From James I. to Union of
Crowns--From Union of Crowns to Treaty of Union--Brief
Summary of Period Since the Treaty of Union . . . . . . . . . 249
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Magna Charta, 1215: King John submits to the Barons, and signs
the Great Charter of British Liberties . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
Queen Elizabeth going on board the "Golden Hind" . . . . . . . . 80
Cromwell dissolving the Long Parliament, 1653 . . . . . . . . . 116
Nelson's Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, 1805 . . . . . . . 144
The British Squares at Quatre-Bras, 1815 . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
The British in India: A native prince receiving the decoration
of the order of the Star of India from Albert Edward, the
Prince of Wales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
{9}
A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I
The remotest fact in the history of England is written in her rocks.
Geology tells us of a time when no sea flowed between Dover and Calais,
while an unbroken continent extended from the Mediterranean to the
Orkneys.
Huge mounds of rough stones called Cromlechs, have yielded up still
another secret. Before the coming of the Keltic-Aryans, there dwelt
there two successive races, whose story is briefly told in a few human
fragments found in these "Cromlechs." These remains do not bear the
royal marks of Aryan origin. The men were small in stature, with
inferior skulls; and it is surmised that they belonged to the same
mysterious branch of the human {10} family as the Basques and Iberians,
whose presence in Southern Europe has never been explained.
When the Aryan came and blotted out these races will perhaps always
remain an unanswered question. But while Greece was clothing herself
with a mantle of beauty, which the world for two thousand years has
striven in vain to imitate, there was lying off the North and West
coasts of the European Continent a group of mist-enshrouded islands of
which she had never heard.
Obscured by fogs, and beyond the horizon of Civilization, a branch of
the Aryan race known as Britons were there leading lives as primitive
as the American Indians, dwelling in huts shaped like beehives, which
they covered with branches and plastered with mud. While Phidias was
carving immortal statues for the Parthenon, this early Britisher was
decorating his abode with the heads of his enemies; and could those
shapeless blocks at Stonehenge speak, they would, perhaps, tell of
cruel and hideous Druidical rites witnessed on Salisbury Plain, ages
ago.
{11}
Rumors of the existence of this people reached the Mediterranean three
or four hundred years before Christ, but not until Cæsar's invasion of
the Island (55 B.C.) was there any positive knowledge of them.
The actual conquest of Britain was not one of Caesar's achievements.
But from the moment when his covetous eagle-eye viewed the chalk-cliffs
of Dover from the coast of Northern Gaul, its fate was sealed. The
Roman octopus from that moment had fastened its tentacles upon the
hapless land; and in 45 A.D., under the Emperor Claudius, it became a
Roman province. In vain did the Britons struggle for forty years. In
vain did the heroic Boadicea (during the reign of Nero, 61 A.D.), like
Hermann in Germany, and Vercingetorix in France, resist the destruction
of her nation by the Romans. In vain did this woman herself lead the
Britons, in a frenzy of patriotism; and when the inevitable defeat
came, and London was lost, with the desperate courage of the barbarian
she destroyed herself rather than witness the humiliation of her race.
The stately Westminster and St. Paul's {12} did not look down upon this
heroic daughter of Britain. London at that time was a collection of
miserable huts and entrenched cattle-pens, which were in Keltic speech
called the "Fort-on-the-Lake"--or "Llyndin," an uncouth name in Latin
ears, which gave little promise of the future London, the Romans
helping it to its final form by calling it Londinium.
But the octopus had firmly closed about its victim, whose struggles,
before the year 100 A.D., had practically ceased. A civilization which
made no effort to civilize was forcibly planted upon the island. Where
had been the humble village, protected by a ditch and felled trees,
there arose the walled city, with temples and baths and forum, and
stately villas with frescoed walls and tessellated floors, and hot-air
currents converting winter into summer.
So Chester, Colchester, Lincoln, York, London, and a score of other
cities were set like jewels in a surface of rough clay, the Britons
filling in the intervening spaces with their own rude customs, habits,
and manners. Dwelling in wretched cabins {13} thatched with straw and
chinked with mud, they still stubbornly maintained their own uncouth
speech and nationality, while they helplessly saw all they could earn
swallowed up in taxes and tributes by their insatiate conquerors. The
Keltic-Gauls might, if they would, assimilate this Roman civilization,
but not so the Keltic-Britons.
The two races dwelt side by side, but separate (except to some extent
in the cities), or, if possible, the vanquished retreated before the
vanquisher into Wales and Cornwall; and there to-day are found the only
remains of the aboriginal Briton race in England.
The Roman General Agricola had built in 78 A.D. a massive wall across
the North of England, extending from sea to sea, to protect the Roman
territory from the Picts and Scots, those wild dwellers in the Northern
Highlands. It seems to us a frail barrier to a people accustomed to
leaping the rocky wall set by nature between the North and the South;
and unless it were maintained by a line of legions extending its entire
length, they must have laughed at such a defence; {14} even when
duplicated later, as it was, by the Emperor Hadrian, in 120 A.D.; and
still twice again, first by Emperor Antoninus, and then by Severus.
For the swift transportation of troops in the defensive warfare always
carried on with the Picts and Scots, magnificent roads were built,
which linked the Romanized cities together in a network of splendid
highways.
There were more than three centuries of peace. Agriculture, commerce,
and industries came into existence. "Wealth accumulated," but the
Briton "decayed" beneath the weight of a splendid system, which had not
benefited, but had simply crushed out of him his original vigor.
Together with Roman villas, and vice, and luxury, had also come
Christianity. But the Briton, if he had learned to pray, had forgotten
how to fight,--and how to govern; and now the Roman Empire was
perishing. She needed all her legions to keep Alaric and his Goths out
of Rome.
In 410 A.D. the fair cities and roads were deserted. The tramp of
Roman soldiers was heard no more in the land, and the {15} enfeebled
native race were left helpless and alone to fight their battles with
the Picts and Scots;--that fierce Briton offshoot which had for
centuries dwelt in the fastnesses of the Highlands, and which swarmed
down upon them like vultures as soon as their protectors were gone.
In 446 A.D. the unhappy Britons invited their fate. Like their
cousins, the Gauls, they invited the Teutons from across the sea to
come to their rescue, and with result far more disastrous.
When the Frank became the champion and conqueror of Gaul, he had for
centuries been in conflict or in contact with Rome, and had learned
much of the old Southern civilizations, and to some extent adopted
their ideals. Not so the Angles and Saxons, who came pouring into
Britain from Schleswig-Holstein. They were uncontaminated pagans. In
scorn of Roman luxury, they set the torch to the villas, and temples
and baths. They came, exterminating, not assimilating. The more
complaisant Frank had taken Romanized, Latinized Gaul just as he found
her, and had even speedily {16} adopted her religion. It was for Gaul
a change of rulers, but not of civilization.
But the Angles and Saxons were Teutons of a different sort. They
brought across the sea in those "keels" their religion, their manners,
habits, nature, and speech; and they brought them for use (just as the
Englishman to-day carries with him a little England wherever he goes).
Their religion, habits, and manners they stamped upon the helpless
Britons. In spite of King Arthur, and his knights, and his sword
"Excalibur," they swiftly paganized the land which had been for three
centuries Christianized; and their nature and speech were so ground
into the land of their adoption that they exist to-day wherever the
Anglo-Saxon abides.
From Windsor Palace to the humblest abode in England (and in America)
are to be found the descendants of these dominating barbarians who
flooded the British Isles in the 5th Century. What sort of a race were
they? Would we understand England to-day, we must understand them. It
is not sufficient to know that they were bearded {17} and stalwart,
fair and ruddy, flaxen-haired and with cold blue eyes. We should know
what sort of souls looked out of those clear cold eyes. What sort of
impulses and hearts dwelt within those brawny breasts.
Their hearts were barbarous, but loving and loyal, and nature had
placed them in strong, vehement, ravenous bodies. They were untamed
brutes, with noble instincts.
They had ideals too; and these are revealed in the rude songs and epics
in which they delighted. Monstrous barbarities are committed, but
always to accomplish some stern purpose of duty. They are cruel in
order to be just. This sluggish, ravenous, drinking brute, with no
gleam of tenderness, no light-hearted rhythm in his soul, has yet
chaotic glimpses of the sublime in his earnest, gloomy nature. He
gives little promise of culture, but much of heroism. There is, too, a
reaching after something grand and invisible, which is a deep religious
instinct. All these qualities had the future English nation slumbering
within them. Marriage was sacred, woman honored. All the members of a
family were responsible for the {18} acts of one member. The sense of
obligation and of responsibility was strong and binding.
Is not every type of English manhood explained by such an inheritance?
From the drunken brawler in his hovel to the English gentleman "taking
his pleasures sadly," all are accounted for; and Hampden, Milton,
Cromwell, John Bright, and Gladstone existed potentially in those
fighting, drinking savages in the 5th Century.
Their religion, after 150 years, was exchanged for Christianity. Time
softened their manners and habits, and mingled new elements with their
speech. But the Anglo-Saxon _nature_ has defied the centuries and
change. _A strong sense of justice_, and a _resolute resistance to
encroachments upon personal liberty_, are the warp and woof of
Anglo-Saxon character yesterday, to-day and forever. The steady
insistence of these traits has been making English History for
precisely 1,400 years, (from 495 to 1895,) and the history of the
Anglo-Saxon race in America for 200 years as well.
Our ancestors brought with them from {19} their native land a simple,
just, Teutonic structure of society and government, the base of which
was the _individual free-man_. The family was considered the social
unit. Several families near together made a township, the affairs of
the township being settled by the male freeholders, who met together to
determine by conference what should be done.
This was the germ of the "town-meeting" and of popular government. In
the "witan," or "wise men," who were chosen as advisers and adjusters
of difficult questions, exist the future legislature and judiciary,
while in the king, or "alder-mann" ("Ealdorman") we see not an
oppressor, but one who by superior age and experience is fitted to
lead. Cerdic, first Saxon king, was simply Cerdic the "Ealdorman" or
"Alder-mann."
They were a free people from the beginning. They had never bowed the
neck to yoke, their heads had never bent to tyranny. Better far was it
that Roman civilization, built upon Keltic-Briton foundation, should
have been effaced utterly, and that this {20} strong untamed humanity,
even cruel and terrible as it was, should replace it. Roman laws,
language, literature, faith, manners, were all swept away. A few
mosaics, coins, and ruined fragments of walls and roads are all the
record that remains of 300 years of occupation.
And the Briton himself--what became of him? In Ireland and Scotland he
lingers still; but, except in Wales and Cornwall, England knows him no
more. Like the American Indian, he was swept into the remote,
inaccessible corners of his own land. It seemed cruel, but it had to
be. Would we build strong and high, it must not be upon sand. We
distrust the Kelt as a foundation for nations as we do sand for our
temples. France was never cohesive until a mixture of Teuton had
toughened it. Genius makes a splendid spire, but a poor corner-stone.
It would seem that the Keltic race, brilliant and richly endowed, was
still unsuited to the world in its higher stages of development. In
Britain, Gaul, and Spain they were displaced and absorbed by the
Germanic races. And now for long {21} centuries no Keltic people of
importance has maintained its independence; the Gaelic of the Scotch
Highlands, and of Ireland, the native dialect of the Welsh and of
Brittany, being the scanty remains of that great family of related
tongues which once occupied more territory than German, Latin, and
Greek combined. The solution of the Irish question may lie in the fact
that the Irish are fighting against the inevitable; that they belong to
a race which is on its way to extinction, and which is intended to
survive only as a brilliant thread, wrought into the texture of more
commonplace but more enduring peoples.
It was written in the book of fate that a great nation should arise
upon that green island by the North Sea. A foundation of Roman cement,
made by a mingling of Keltic-Briton, and a corrupt, decayed
civilization, would have altered not alone the fate of a nation, but
the History of the World. Our barbarian ancestors brought from
Schleswig-Holstein a rough, clean, strong foundation for what was to
become a new type of humanity on the face of the earth. {22} A
Humanity which was not to be Persian nor Greek, nor yet Roman, but to
be nourished on the best results of all, and to become the
standard-bearer for the Civilization of the future.
The Jutes came first as an advance-guard of the great Teuton invasion.
It was but the prologue to the play when Hengist and Horsa, in 449
A.D., occupied what is now Kent, in the Southeast extremity of England.
It was only when Cerdic and his Saxons placed foot on British soil (495
A.D.) that the real drama began. And when the Angles shortly afterward
followed and occupied all that the Saxons had not appropriated (the
north and east coast), the actors were all present and the play began.
The Angles were destined to bestow their name upon the land
(Angle-land), and the Saxons a line of kings extending from Cerdic to
Victoria.
Covetous of each other's possessions, these Teutons fought as brothers
will. Exterminating the Britons was diversified with efforts to
exterminate one another. Seven kingdoms, four Anglian and three Saxon,
{23} for 300 years tried to annihilate each other; then, finally
submitting to the strongest, united completely,--as only children of
one household of nations can do. The Saxons had been for two centuries
dominating more and more until the long struggle ended--behold,
Anglo-Saxon England consolidated under one Saxon king! The other
kingdoms--Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Kent, Sussex, and
Essex--surviving as shires and counties.
In 802 A.D., while Charlemagne was welding together his vast and
composite empire, the Saxon Egbert (Ecgberht), descendant of Cerdic
(the "Alder-mann"), was consolidating a less imposing, but, as it has
proved, more permanent kingdom; and the History of a United England had
begun.
While Christianity had been effaced by the Teuton invasion in England,
it had survived among the Irish-Britons. Ireland was never paganized.
With fiery zeal, her people not alone maintained the religion of the
Cross at home, but even drove back the heathen flood by sending
missionaries among the Picts in the Highlands, and into {24} other
outlying territory about the North Sea.
Pope Gregory the Great saw this Keltic branch of Christendom, actually
outrunning Latin Christianity in activity, and he was spurred to an act
which was to be fraught with tremendous consequences.
{25}
CHAPTER II
The same spot in Kent (the isle of Thanet), which had witnessed the
landing of Hengist and Horsa in 449, saw in 597 a band of men, calling
themselves "Strangers from Rome," arriving under the leadership of
Augustine.
They moved in solemn procession toward Canterbury, bearing before them
a silver cross, with a picture of Christ, chanting in concert, as they
went, the litany of their Church, Christianity had entered by the same
door through which paganism had come 150 years before.
The religion of Wodin and Thor had ceased to satisfy the expanding soul
of the Anglo-Saxon; and the new faith rapidly spread; its charm
consisting in the light it seemed to throw upon the darkness
encompassing man's past and future.
{26}
An aged chief said to Edwin, king of Northumbria, (after whom
"Edwins-borough" was named,) "Oh, King, as a bird flies through this
hall on a winter night, coming out of the darkness, and vanishing into
the darkness again, even so is our life! If these strangers can tell
us aught of what is beyond, let us hear them."
King Edwin was among the first to espouse the new religion, and in less
than one hundred years the entire land was Christianized.
With the adoption of Christianity a new life began to course in the
veins of the people.
Cædmon, an unlettered Northumbrian peasant, was inspired by an Angel
who came to him in his sleep and told him to "Sing." "He was not
disobedient unto the heavenly vision." He wrote epics upon all the
sacred themes, from the creation of the World to the Ascension of
Christ and the final judgment of man, and English literature was born.
"Paradise Lost," one thousand years later, was but the echo of this
poet-peasant, who was the Milton of the 7th Century.
{27}
In the 8th Century, Bæda (the venerable Beda), another Northumbrian,
who was monk, scholar, and writer, wrote the first History of his
people and his country, and discoursed upon astronomy, physics,
meteorology, medicine, and philosophy. These were but the early
lispings of Science; but they held the germs of the "British
Association" and of the "Royal Society;" for as English poetry has its
roots in Cædmon, so is English intellectual life rooted in Bæda.
The culmination of this new era was in Alfred, who came to the throne
of his grandfather, Egbert, in 871.
He brought the highest ideals of the duties of a King, a broad,
statesmanlike grasp of conditions, an unsullied heart, and a clear,
strong intelligence, with unusual inclination toward an intellectual
life.
Few Kings have better deserved the title of "great." With him began
the first conception of National law. He prepared a code for the
administration of justice in his Kingdom, which was prefaced by the Ten
Commandments, and ended with the Golden Rule; while in his leisure
hours he gave {28} coherence and form to the literature of the time.
Taking the writings of Cædmon, Bæda, Pope Gregory, and Boethius;
translating, editing, commentating, and adding his own to the views of
others upon a wide range of subjects.
He was indeed the father not alone of a legal system in England, but of
her culture and literature besides. The people of Wantage, his native
town, did well, in 1849, to celebrate the one-thousandth anniversary of
the birth of the great King Alfred.
But a condition of decadence was in progress in England, which Alfred's
wise reign was powerless to arrest, and which his greatness may even
have tended to hasten. The distance between the king and the people
had widened from a mere step to a gulf. When the Saxon kings began to
be clothed with a mysterious dignity as "the Lord's anointed," the
people were correspondingly degraded; and the degradation of this
class, in which the true strength of England consisted, bore unhappy
but natural fruits.
A slave or "unfree" class had come with {29} the Teutons from their
native land. This small element had for centuries now been swelled by
captives taken in war, and by accessions through misery, poverty, and
debt, which drove men to sell themselves and families and wear the
collar of servitude. The slave was not under the lash; but he was a
mere chattel, having no more part than cattle (from whom this title is
derived) in the real life of the state.
In addition to this, political and social changes had been long
modifying the structure of society in a way tending to degrade the
general condition. As the lesser Kingdoms were merged into one large
one, the wider dominion of the king removed him further from the
people; every succeeding reign raising him higher, depressing them
lower, until the old English freedom was lost.
The "folk-moot" and "Witenagemot"* were heard of no more. The life of
the early English State had been in its "folk-moot," and hence rested
upon the individual English freeman, who knew no superior but {30} God,
and the law. Now, he had sunk into the mere "villein," bound to follow
his lord to the field, to give him his personal service, and to look to
him alone for justice. With the decline of the freeman (or of popular
government) came Anglo-Saxon degeneracy, which made him an easy prey to
the Danes.
*Witenagemot--a Council composed of "Witan" or "Wise Men."
The Northmen were a perpetual menace and scourge to England and
Scotland. There never could be any feeling of permanent security while
that hostile flood was always ready to press in through an unguarded
spot on the coast. The sea wolves and robbers from Norway came
devouring, pillaging, and ravaging, and then away again to their own
homes or lairs. Their boast was that they "scorned to earn by sweat
what they might win by blood." But the Northmen from Denmark were of a
different sort. They were looking for permanent conquest, and had
dreams of Empire, and, in fact, had had more or less of a grasp upon
English soil for centuries before Alfred; and one of his greatest
achievements was driving these {31} hated invaders out of England. In
1013, under the leadership of Sweyn, they once more poured in upon the
land, and after a brief but fierce struggle a degenerate England was
gathered into the iron hand of the Dane.
Canute, the son of Sweyn, continued the successes of his father,
conquering in Scotland Duncan (slain later by Macbeth), and proceeded
to realize his dream of a great Scandinavian empire, which should
include Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and England. He was one of those
monumental men who mark the periods in the pages of History, and yet
child enough to command the tides to cease, and when disobeyed, was so
humiliated, it is said, he never again placed a crown upon his head,
acknowledging the presence of a King greater than himself.
Conqueror though he was, the Dane was not exactly a foreigner in
England. The languages of the two nations were almost the same, and a
race affinity took away much of the bitterness of the subjugation,
while Canute ruled more as a wise native King than as a Conqueror.
{32}
But the span of life, even of a founder of Empire, is short. Canute's
sons were degenerate, cruel, and in forty years after the Conquest had
so exasperated the Anglo-Saxons that enough of the primitive spirit
returned, to throw off the foreign yoke, and the old Saxon line was
restored in Edward, known as "the Confessor."
Edward had qualities more fitted to adorn the cloister than the throne.
He was more of a Saint than King, and was glad to leave the affairs of
his realm in the hands of Earl Godwin. This man was the first great
English statesman who had been neither Priest nor King. Astute,
powerful, dexterous, he was virtual ruler of the Kingdom until the
death of the childless King Edward in 1066, when Godwin's son Harold
was called to the empty throne.
Foreign royal alliances have caused no end of trouble in the life of
Kingdoms. A marriage between a Saxon King and a Norman Princess, in
about the year 1000 A.D., has made a vast deal of history. This
Princess of Normandy, was the grandmother of the man, who was to be
known as "William {33} the Conqueror." In the absence of a direct heir
to the English throne, made vacant by Edward's death, this descent gave
a shadowy claim to the ambitious Duke across the Channel, which he was
not slow to use for his own purposes.
He asserted that Edward had promised that he should succeed him, and
that Harold, the son of Godwin, had assured him of his assistance in
securing his rights upon the death of Edward the Confessor. A
tremendous indignation stirred his righteous soul when he heard of the
crowning of Harold; not so much at the loss of the throne, as at the
treachery of his friend.
In the face of tremendous opposition and difficulties, he got together
his reluctant Barons and a motley host, actually cutting down the trees
with which to create a fleet, and then, depending upon pillage for
subsistence, rushed to face victory or ruin.
The Battle of Senlac (or Hastings) has been best told by a woman's hand
in the famous Bayeux Tapestry. An arrow pierced the unhappy Harold in
the eye, entering the brain, and the head which had worn the {34} crown
of England ten short months lay in the dust, William, with wrath
unappeased, refusing him burial.
William, Duke of Normandy, was King of England. Not alone that. He
claimed that he had been rightful King ever since the death of his
cousin Edward the Confessor; and that those who had supported Harold
were traitors, and their lands confiscated to the crown. As nearly all
had been loyal to Harold, the result was that most of the wealth of the
Nation was emptied into William's lap, not by right of conquest, but by
English law.
Feudalism had been gradually stifling old English freedom, and the King
saw himself confronted with a feudal baronage, nobles claiming
hereditary, military, and judicial power independent of the King, such
as degraded the Monarchy and riveted down the people in France for
centuries. With the genius of the born ruler and conqueror, William
discerned the danger and its remedy. Availing himself of the early
legal constitution of England, he placed justice in the old local
courts of the {35} "hundred" and "shire," to which every freeman had
access, and these courts he placed under the jurisdiction of the _King_
alone. In Germany and France the vassal owned supreme fealty to his
_lord_, against all foes, even the King himself. In England, the
tenant from this time swore direct fealty to none save his King.
With the unbounded wealth at his disposal, William granted enormous
estates to his followers upon condition of military service at his
call. In other words, he seized the entire landed property of the
State, and then used it to buy the allegiance of the people. By this
means the whole Nation was at his command as an army subject to his
will; and there was at the same time a breaking up of old feudal
tyrannies by a redistribution of the soil under a new form of land
tenure.
The City of London was rewarded for instant submission by a Charter,
signed,--not by his name--but his mark, for the Conqueror of England
(from whom Victoria is twenty-fifth remove in descent), could not write
his name.
{36}
He built the Tower of London, to hold the City in restraint. Fortress,
palace, prison, it stands to-day the grim progenitor of the Castles and
Strongholds which soon frowned from every height in England.
He took the outlawed, despised Jew under his protection; not as a
philanthropist, but seeing in him a being who was always accumulating
wealth, which could in any emergency be wrung from him by torture, if
milder measures failed. Their hoarded treasure flowed into the land.
They built the first stone houses, and domestic architecture was
created. Jewish gold built Castles and Cathedrals, and awoke the
slumbering sense of beauty. Through their connection with the Jews in
Spain and the East, knowledge of the physical sciences also streamed
into the land, and an intellectual life was created, which bore fruit a
century and a half later in Roger Bacon.
All these things were not done in a day. It was twenty years after the
Conquest that William ordered a survey and valuation of all the land,
which was recorded in what was known as "Domesday Book," that he {37}
might know the precise financial resources of his kingdom, and what was
due him on the confiscated estates. Then he summoned all the nobles
and large landholders to meet him at Salisbury Plain, and those
shapeless blocks at "Stonehenge" witnessed a strange scene when 60,000
men there took solemn oath to support William as King _even against
their own lords_. With this splendid consummation his work was
practically finished. He had, with supreme dexterity and wisdom,
blended two Civilizations, had at the right moment curbed the
destructive element in feudalism, and had secured to the Englishman
free access to the surface for all time. Thus the old English freedom
was in fact restored by the Norman Conquest, by _direct_ act of the
Conqueror.
William typified in his person a transitional time, the old Norse
world, mingling strangely in him with the new. He was the last outcome
of his race. Norse daring and cruelty were side by side with
gentleness and aspiration. No human pity tempered his vengeance. When
hides were hung on the City Walls at Alençon, in insult {38} to his
mother (the daughter of a tanner), he tore out the eyes, cut off the
hands and feet of the prisoners, and threw them over the walls. When
he did this, and when he refused Harold's body a grave, it was the
spirit of the sea-wolves within him. But it was the man of the coming
Civilization, who could not endure death by process of law in his
Kingdom, and who delighted to discourse with the gentle and pious
Anselm, upon the mysteries of life and death.
The _indirect_ benefits of the Conquest, came in enriching streams from
the older civilizations. As Rome had been heir to the accumulations of
experience in the ancient Nations, so England, through France became
the heir to Latin institutions, and was joined to the great continuous
stream of the World's highest development. Fresh intellectual stimulus
renovated the Church. Roman law was planted upon the simple Teuton
system of rights. Every department in State and in Society shared the
advance, while language became refined, flexible, and enriched.
This engrafting with the results of {39} antiquity, was an enormous
saving of time, in the development of a nation; but it did not change
the essential character of the Anglo-Saxon, nor of his speech. The
ravenous Teuton could devour and assimilate all these new elements and
remain essentially unchanged. The language of Bunyan and of the Bible
is Saxon; and it is the language of the Englishman to-day in childhood
and in extremity. A man who is thoroughly in earnest--who is
drowning--speaks Saxon. Character, as much as speech, remains
unaltered. There is small trace of the Norman in the House of Commons,
or in the meetings at Exeter Hall, or in the home, or life of the
people anywhere.
The qualities which have made England great were brought across the
North Sea in those "keels" in the 5th Century. The Anglo-Saxon put on
the new civilization and institutions brought him by the Conquest, as
he would an embroidered garment; but the man within the garment, though
modified by civilization, has never essentially changed.
{40}
CHAPTER III
It is not in the exploits of its Kings but in the aspirations and
struggles of its people, that the true history of a nation is to be
sought. During the rule and misrule of the two sons, and grandson, of
the Conqueror, England was steadily growing toward its ultimate form.
As Society outgrew the simple ties of blood which bound it together in
old Saxon England, the people had sought a larger protection in
combinations among fellow freemen, based upon identity of occupation.
The "Frith-Gilds," or peace Clubs, came into existence in Europe during
the 9th and 10th Centuries. They were harshly repressed in Germany and
Gaul, but found kindly welcome from Alfred in England. In their mutual
responsibility, in their motto, "if any misdo, let all bear it," Alfred
saw simply {41} an enlarged conception of the "_family_," which was the
basis of the Saxon social structure; and the adoption of this idea of a
larger unity, in _combination_, was one of the first phases of an
expanding national life. So, after the conquest, while ambitious kings
were absorbing French and Irish territory or fighting with recalcitrant
barons, the _merchant, craft_, and _church_ "_gilds_" were creating a
great popular force, which was to accomplish more enduring conquests.
It was in the "boroughs" and in these "gilds" that the true life of the
nation consisted. It was the shopkeepers and artisans which brought
the right of free speech, and free meeting, and of equal justice across
the ages of tyranny. One freedom after another was being won, and the
battle with oppression was being fought, not by Knights and Barons, but
by the sturdy burghers and craftsmen. Silently as the coral insect,
the Anglo-Saxon was building an indestructible foundation for English
liberties.
The Conqueror had bequeathed England to his second son, William Rufus,
and {42} Normandy to his eldest son, Robert. In 1095 (eight years
after his death) commenced those extraordinary wars carried on by the
chivalry of Europe against the Saracens in the East. Robert, in order
to raise money to join the first crusade, mortgaged Normandy to his
brother, and an absorption of Western France had begun, which, by means
of conquest by arms and the more peaceful conquest by marriage, would
in fifty years extend English dominion from the Scottish border to the
Pyrenees.
William's son Henry (I.), who succeeded his older brother, William
Rufus, inherited enough of his father's administrative genius to
complete the details of government which he had outlined. He organized
the beginning of a judicial system, creating out of his secretaries and
Royal Ministers a Supreme Court, whose head bore the title of
Chancellor. He created also another tribunal, which represented the
body of royal vassals who had all hitherto been summoned together three
times a year. This "King's Court," as it was called, considered
everything relating to the revenues of the state. Its {43} meetings
were about a table with a top like a chessboard, which led to calling
the members who sat, "Barons of the Exchequer." He also wisely created
a class of lesser nobles, upon whom the old barons looked down with
scorn, but who served as a counterbalancing force against the arrogance
of an old nobility, and bridged the distance between them and the
people.
So, while the thirty-five years of Henry's reign advanced, and
developed the purposes of his father, his marriage with a Saxon
Princess did much to efface the memory of foreign conquest, in
restoring the old Saxon blood to the royal line. But the young Prince
who embodied this hope, went down with 140 young nobles in the "White
Ship," while returning from Normandy. It is said that his father never
smiled again, and upon his death, his nephew Stephen was king during
twenty unfruitful years.
But the succession returned through Matilda, daughter of Henry I. and
the Saxon princess. She married Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. This
Geoffrey, called "the handsome," always wore in his helmet a sprig of
{44} the broom-plant of Anjou (_Planta genista_), hence their son,
Henry II. of England, was known as Henry _Plante-à-genêt_.
This first Plantagenet was a strong, coarse-fibred man; a practical
reformer, without sentiment, but really having good government
profoundly at heart.
He took the reins into his great, rough hands with a determination
first of all to curb the growing power of the clergy, by bringing it
under the jurisdiction of the civil courts. To this end he created his
friend and chancellor, Thomas à Becket, a primate of the Church to aid
the accomplishment of his purpose. But from the moment Becket became
Archbishop of Canterbury, he was transformed into the defender of the
organization he was intended to subdue. Henry was furious when he
found himself resisted and confronted by the very man he had created as
an instrument of his will. These were years of conflict. At last, in
a moment of exasperation, the king exclaimed, "Is there none brave
enough to rid me of this low-born priest!" This was construed into a
command. Four knights sped swiftly {45} to Canterbury Cathedral, and
murdered the Archbishop at the altar. Henry was stricken with remorse,
and caused himself to be beaten with rods like the vilest criminal,
kneeling upon the spot stained with the blood of his friend. It was a
brutal murder, which caused a thrill of horror throughout Christendom.
Becket was canonized; miracles were performed at his tomb, and for
hundreds of years a stream of bruised humanity flowed into Canterbury,
seeking surcease of sorrow, and cure for sickness and disease, by
contact with the bones of the murdered saint.
But Henry had accomplished his end. The clergy was under the
jurisdiction of the King's Court during his reign. He also continued
the judicial reorganization commenced by Henry I. He divided the
kingdom into judicial districts. This completely effaced the legal
jurisdiction of the nobles. The Circuits thus defined correspond
roughly with those existing to-day; and from the Court of Appeals,
which was also his creation, came into existence tribunal after
tribunal in the future, including the "Star Chamber" and "Privy
Council."
{46}
But of all the blows aimed at the barons none told more effectually
than the restoration of a national militia, which freed the crown from
dependence upon feudal retainers for military service.
In a fierce quarrel between two Irish chieftains, Henry was called upon
to interfere; and when the quarrel was adjusted, Ireland found herself
annexed to the English crown, and ruled by a viceroy appointed by the
king. The drama of the Saxons defending the Britons from the Picts and
Scots, was repeated.
This first Plantagenet, with fiery face, bull-neck, bowed legs, keen,
rough, obstinate, passionate, left England greater and freer, and yet
with more of a personal despotism than he had found her. The trouble
with such triumphs is that they presuppose the wisdom and goodness of
succeeding tyrants.
Henry's heart broke when he learned that his favorite son, John, was
conspiring against him. He turned his face to the wall and died
(1189), the practical hard-headed old king leaving his throne to a
romantic {47} dreamer, who could not even speak the language of his
country.
Richard (Coeur de Lion) was a hero of romance, but not of history. The
practical concerns of his kingdom had no charm for him. His eye was
fixed upon Jerusalem, not England, and he spent almost the entire ten
years of his reign in the Holy Land.
The Crusades, had fired the old spirit of Norse adventure left by the
Danes, and England shared the general madness of the time. As a result
for the treasure spent and blood spilled in Palestine, she received a
few architectural devices and the science of Heraldry. But to Europe,
the benefits were incalculable. The barons were impoverished, their
great estates mortgaged to thrifty burghers, who extorted from their
poverty charters of freedom, which unlocked the fetters and broke the
spell of the dark ages.
Richard the Lion-Hearted died as he had lived, not as a king, but as a
romantic adventurer. He was shot by an arrow while trying to secure
fabulous hidden treasure in France, with which to continue his wars in
Palestine.
{48}
His brother John, in 1199, ascended the throne. His name has come down
as a type of baseness, cruelty, and treachery. His brother Geoffrey
had married Constance of Brittany, and their son Arthur, named after
the Keltic hero, had been urged as a rival claimant for the English
throne. Shakespeare has not exaggerated the cruel fate of this boy,
whose monstrous uncle really purposed having his eyes burnt out, being
sure that if he were blind he would no longer be eligible for king.
But death is surer even than blindness, and Hubert, his merciful
protector from one fate, was powerless to avert the other. Some one
was found with "heart as hard as hammered iron," who put an end to the
young life (1203) at the Castle of Rouen.
But the King of England, was vassal to the King of France, and Philip
summoned John to account to him for this deed. When John refused to
appear, the French provinces were torn from him. In 1204 he saw an
Empire stretching from the English Channel to the Pyrenees vanish from
his grasp, and was at one blow reduced to the realm of England.
{49}
When we see on the map, England as she was in that day, sprawling in
unwieldy fashion over the western half of France, we realize how much
stronger she has been on "that snug little island, that right little,
tight little island," and we can see that John's wickedness helped her
to be invincible.
The destinies of England in fact rested with her worst king. His
tyranny, brutality, and disregard of his subjects' rights, induced a
crisis which laid the corner-stone of England's future, and buttressed
her liberties for all time.
At a similar crisis in France, two centuries later, the king (Charles
VII.) made common cause with the people against the barons or dukes.
In England, in the 13th Century, the barons and people were drawn
together against the King. They framed a Charter, its provisions
securing protection and justice to every freeman in England. On Easter
Day, 1215, the barons, attended by two thousand armed knights, met the
King near Oxford, and demanded his signature to the paper. John was
awed, and asked them to {50} name a day and place. "Let the day be the
15th of June, and the place Runnymede," was the reply.
A brown, shrivelled piece of parchment in the British Museum to-day,
attests to the keeping of this appointment. That old Oak at Runnymede,
under whose spreading branches the name of John was affixed to the
Magna Charta, was for centuries held the most sacred spot in England.
It is an impressive picture we get of John, "the Lord's Anointed," when
this scene was over, in a burst of rage rolling on the floor, biting
straw, and gnawing a stick! "They have placed twenty-five kings over
me," he shouted in a fury; meaning the twenty-five barons who were
entrusted with the duty of seeing that the provisions of the Charter
were fulfilled.
Whether his death, one year later (1216), was the result of vexation of
spirit or surfeit of peaches and cider, or poison, history does not
positively say. But England shed no tears for the King to whom she
owes her liberties in the Magna Charta.
{51}
CHAPTER IV
For the succeeding 56 years John's son, Henry III., was King of
England. While this vain, irresolute, ostentatious king was extorting
money for his ambitious designs and extravagant pleasures, and
struggling to get back the pledges given in the Great Charter, new and
higher forces, to which he gave no heed, were at work in his kingdom.
Paris at this time was the centre of a great intellectual revival,
brought about by the Crusades. We have seen that through the despised
Jew, at the time of the Conquest, a higher civilization was brought
into England. Along with his hoarded gold came knowledge and culture,
which he had obtained from the Saracen. Now, these germs had been
revived by direct contact with the sources of ancient knowledge in {52}
the East during the Crusades; and while the long mental torpor of
Europe was rolling away like mist before the rising sun, England felt
the warmth of the same quickening rays, and Oxford took on a new life.
It was not the stately Oxford of to-day, but a rabble of roystering,
revelling youths, English, Welsh, and Scotch, who fiercely fought out
their fathers' feuds.
They were a turbulent mob, who gave advance opinion, as it were, upon
every ecclesiastical or political measure, by fighting it out on the
streets of their town, so that an outbreak at Oxford became a sort of
prelude to every great political movement.
Impossible as it seems, intellectual life grew and expanded in this
tumultuous atmosphere; and while the democratic spirit of the
University threatened the king, its spirit of free intellectual inquiry
shook the Church.
The revival of classical learning, bringing streams of thought from old
Greek and Latin fountains, caused a sudden expansion. It was like the
discovery of an unsuspected and greater world, with a body of new
truth, {53} which threw the old into contemptuous disuse. A spirit of
doubt, scepticism, and denial, was engendered. They comprehended now
why Abelard had claimed the "supremacy of reason over faith," and why
Italian poets smiled at dreams of "immortality." Then, too, the new
culture compelled respect for infidel and for Jew. Was it not from
their impious hands, that this new knowledge of the physical universe
had been received?
Roger Bacon drank deeply from these fountains, new and old, and
struggled like a giant to illumine the darkness of his time, by
systematizing all existing knowledge. His "Opus Majus" was intended to
bring these riches to the unlearned. But he died uncomprehended, and
it was reserved for later ages to give recognition to his stupendous
work, wrought in the twilight out of dimly comprehended truth.
Pursued by the dream of recovering the French Empire, lost by his
father, and of retracting the promises given in the Charter, Henry III.
spent his entire reign in conflict with the barons and the people, who
were {54} closely drawn together by the common danger and rallied to
the defence of their liberties under the leadership of Simon de
Montfort.
It was at the town of Oxford that the great council of barons and
bishops held its meetings. This council, which had long been called
"Parliament" (from _parler_), in the year 1265 became for the first
time a representative body, when Simon de Montfort summoned not alone
the lords and bishops--but two citizens from every city, and two
burghers from every borough. A Rubicon was passed when the merchant,
and the shopkeeper, sat for the first time with the noble and the
bishops in the great council. It was thirty years before the change
was fully effected, it being in the year 1295, a little more than 600
years ago, that the first true Parliament met. But the "House of
Lords" and the germ of the "House of Commons," existed in this assembly
at Oxford in 1265, and a government "of the people, for the people, by
the people," had commenced.
Edward I., the son and successor of Henry III., not only graciously
confirmed {55} the Great Charter, but added to its privileges. His
expulsion of the Jews, is the one dark blot on his reign.
He conquered North Wales, the stronghold where those Keltic Britons,
the Welsh, had always maintained a separate existence; and as a
recompense for their wounded feelings bestowed upon the heir to the
throne, the title "_Prince of Wales_."
Westminster Abbey was completed at this time and began to be the
resting-place for England's illustrious dead. The invention of
gunpowder, which was to make iron-clad knights a romantic tradition,
also belongs to this period, which saw too, the conquest of Scotland;
and the magic stone supposed to have been Jacob's pillow at Bethel, and
which was the Scottish talisman, was carried to Westminster Abbey and
built into a coronation-chair, which has been used at the crowning of
every English sovereign since that time.
Scottish liberties were not so sacrificed by this conquest as had been
the Irish. The Scots would not be slaves, nor would they stay
conquered without many a struggle.
{56}
Robert Bruce led a great rebellion, which extended into the succeeding
reign, and Bruce's name was covered with glory by his great victory at
Bannockburn (1314).
We need not linger over the twenty years during which Edward II., by
his private infamies, so exasperated his wife and son that they brought
about his deposition, which was followed soon after by his murder; and
then by a disgraceful regency, during which the Queen's favorite,
Mortimer, was virtually king. But King Edward III. commenced to rule
with a strong hand. As soon as he was eighteen years old he summoned
the Parliament. Mortimer was hanged at Tyburn, and his queen-mother
was immured for life.
We have turned our backs upon Old England. The England of a
representative Parliament and a House of Commons, of ideals derived
from a wider knowledge, the England of a Westminster Abbey, and
gunpowder, and cloth-weaving, is the England we all know to-day.
Vicious kings and greed of territory, and lust of power, will keep the
road from being a smooth one, {57} but it leads direct to the England
of Edward VII.; and 1906 was roughly outlined in 1327, when Edward III.
grasped the helm with the decision of a master.
After completing the subjection of Scotland he invaded France,--the
pretext of resisting her designs upon the Netherlands, being merely a
cover for his own thirst for territory and conquest. The victory over
the French at Crécy, 1346, (and later of Poitiers,) covered the warlike
king and his son, Edward the "Black Prince," with imperishable renown.
Small cannon were first used at that battle. The knights and the
archers laughed at the little toy, but found it useful in frightening
the enemies' horses.
Edward III. covered England with a mantle of military glory, for which
she had to pay dearly later. He elevated the kingship to a more
dazzling height, for which there have also been some expensive
reckonings since. He introduced a new and higher dignity into nobility
by the title of Duke, which he bestowed upon his sons; the great
landholders or barons, having until that time constituted a body in
which all were peers. {58} He has been the idol of heroic England.
But he awoke the dream of French conquest, and bequeathed to his
successors a fatal war, which lasted for 100 years.
The "Black Prince" died, and the "Black Death," a fearful pestilence,
desolated a land already decimated by protracted wars. The valiant old
King, after a life of brilliant triumphs, carried a sad and broken
heart to the grave, and Richard II., son of the heroic Prince Edward,
was king.
This last of the Plantagenets had need of great strength and wisdom to
cope with the forces stirring at that time in his kingdom, and was
singularly deficient in both. The costly conquests of his grandfather,
were a troublesome legacy to his feeble grandson. Enormous taxes
unjustly levied to pay for past glories, do not improve the temper of a
people. A shifting of the burden from one class to another arrayed all
in antagonisms against each other, and finally, when the burden fell
upon the lowest order, as it is apt to do, it rose in fierce rebellion
under the leadership of Wat Tyler, a blacksmith (1381).
Concessions were granted and quiet {59} restored, but the people had
learned a new way of throwing off injustice. There began to be a new
sentiment in the air. Men were asking why the few should dress in
velvet and the many in rags. It was the first English revolt against
the tyranny of wealth, when people were heard on the streets singing
the couplet--
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"
As in the times of the early Saxon kings, the cause breeding
destruction was the widening distance between the king and the people.
In those earlier times the people unresistingly lapsed into decadence,
but the Anglo-Saxon had learned much since then, and it was not so safe
to degrade him and trample on his rights.
Then, too, John Wickliffe had been telling some very plain truths to
the people about the Church of Rome, and there was developing a
sentiment which made Pope and Clergy tremble. There was a spirit of
inquiry, having its centre at Oxford, looking into the title-deeds of
the great ecclesiastical {60} despotism. Wickliffe heretically claimed
that the Bible was the one ground of faith, and he added to his heresy
by translating that Book into simple Saxon English, that men might
learn for themselves what was Christ's message to man.
Luther's protest in the 16th Century was but the echo of Wickliffe's in
the 14th,--against the tyranny of a Church from which all spiritual
life had departed, and which in its decay tightened its grasp upon the
very things which its founder put "behind Him" in the temptation on the
mountain, and aimed at becoming a temporal despotism.
Closely intermingled with these struggles was going on another,
unobserved at the time. Three languages held sway in England--Latin in
the Church, French in polite society, and English among the people.
Chaucer's genius selected the language of the people for its
expression, as also of course, did Wickliffe in his translation of the
Bible. French and Latin were dethroned, and the "King's English"
became the language of the literature and speech of the English nation.
{61}
He would have been a wise and great King who could have comprehended
and controlled all the various forces at work at this time. Richard
II. was neither. This seething, tumbling mass of popular discontents
was besides only the groundwork for the personal strifes and ambitions
which raged about the throne. The wretched King, embroiled with every
class and every party, was pronounced by Parliament unfit to reign, the
same body which deposed him, giving the crown to his cousin Henry of
Lancaster (1399), and the reign of the Plantagenets was ended.
{62}
CHAPTER V
The new king did not inherit the throne; he was _elected_ to it. He
was an arbitrary creation of Parliament. The Duke of Lancaster,
Henry's father (John of Gaunt), was only a younger son of Edward III.
According to the strict rules of hereditary succession, there were two
others with claims superior to Henry's. Richard Duke of York, his
cousin, claimed a double descent from the Duke Clarence and also from
the Duke of York, both sons of Edward III.
This led later to the dreariest chapter in English history, "the Wars
of the Roses."
It is an indication of the enormous increase in the strength of
Parliament, that such an exercise of power, the creating of a king, was
possible. Haughty, arrogant kings bowed submissively to its will.
Henry could not make laws nor impose {63} taxes without first summoning
Parliament and obtaining his subjects' consent. But corrupting
influences were at work which were destined to cheat England out of her
liberties for many a year.
The impoverishment of the country to pay for war and royal
extravagances, had awakened a troublesome spirit in the House of
Commons. Cruelty to heretics also, and oppressive enactments were
fought and defeated in this body. The King, clergy, and nobles, were
drawing closer together and farther away from the people, and were
devising ways of stifling their will.
If the King might not resist the will of Parliament, he could fill it
with men who would not resist his; so, by a system of bribery and force
in the boroughs, the House of Commons had injected into it enough of
the right sort to carry obnoxious measures. This was only one of the
ways in which the dearly bought liberties were being defeated.
Henry IV., the first Lancastrian king, lighted the fires of persecution
in England. The infamous "Statute of Heresy" was {64} passed 1401.
Its first victim was a priest who was thrown to the flames for denying
the doctrine of transubstantiation.
Wickliffe had left to the people not a party, but a sentiment. The
"Lollards," as they were called, were not an organization, but rather a
pervading atmosphere of revolt, which naturally combined with the
social discontent of the time, and there came to be more of hate than
love in the movement, which was at its foundation a revolt against
inequality of condition. As in all such movements, much that was
vicious and unwise in time mingled with it, tending to give some excuse
for its repression. The discarding of an old faith, unless at once
replaced by a new one, is a time fraught with many dangers to Society
and State.
Such were some of the forces at work for fourteen brief years while
Henry IV. wore the coveted crown, and while his son, the roystering
"Prince Hal," in the new character of King (Henry V.) lived out his
brief nine years of glory and conquest.
France, with an insane King, vicious Queen Regent, and torn by the
dissensions {65} of ambitious Dukes, had reached her hour of greatest
weakness, when Henry V. swept down upon her with his archers, and broke
her spirit by his splendid victory at Agincourt; then married her
Princess Katharine, and was proclaimed Regent of France, The rough
wooing of his French bride, immortalized by Shakespeare, throws a
glamour of romance over the time.
But an all-subduing King cut short Henry's triumphs. He was stricken
and died (1422), leaving an infant son nine months old, who bore the
weight of the new title, "King of England and France," while Henry's
brother, the Duke of Bedford, reigned as Regent.
Then it was, that by a mysterious inspiration, Joan of Arc, a child and
a peasant, led the French army to the besieged City of Orleans, and the
crucial battle was won.
Charles VII. was King. The English were driven out of France, and the
Hundred Years' War ended in defeat (1453). England had lost Aquitaine,
which for two hundred years (since Henry II.) had been hers, {66} and
had not a foot of ground on Norman soil.
The long shadow cast by Edward III. upon England was deepening. A
ruinous war had drained her resources and arrested her liberties; and
now the odium of defeat made the burdens it imposed intolerable. The
temper of every class was strained to the danger point. The wretched
government was held responsible, followed, as usual, by impeachments,
murders, and impotent outbursts of fury.
While, owing to social processes long at work, feudalism was in fact a
ruin, a mere empty shell, it still seemed powerful as ever; just as an
oak, long after its roots are dead, will still carry aloft a waving
mass of green leafage. The great Earl of Warwick when he went to
Parliament was still followed by 600 liveried retainers. But when Jack
Cade led 20,000 men in rebellion at the close of the French war, they
were not the serfs and villeinage of other times, but farmers and
laborers, who, when they demanded a more economical expenditure of
royal revenue, freedom at elections, and the removal {67} of
restrictions on their dress and living, knew their rights, and were not
going to give them up without a struggle.
But the madness of personal ambition was going to work deeper ruin and
more complete wreck of England's fortunes. We have seen that by the
interposition of Parliament, the House of Lancaster had been placed on
the throne contrary to the tradition which gave the succession to the
oldest branch, which Richard, the Duke of York, claimed to represent;
his claim strengthened by a double descent from Edward III. through his
two sons, Lionel and Edward.
For twenty-one years, (1450-1471) these descendants of Edward III. were
engaged in the most savage war, for purely selfish and personal ends,
with not one noble or chivalric element to redeem the disgraceful
exhibition of human nature at its worst. Murders, executions,
treacheries, adorn a network of intrigue and villany, which was enough
to have made the "White" and the "Red Rose" forever hateful to English
eyes.
The great Earl of Warwick led the White Rose of York to victory,
sending the {68} Lancastrian King to the tower, his wife and child
fugitives from the Kingdom, and proclaimed Edward, (son of Richard Duke
of York, the original claimant, who had been slain in the conflict),
King of England.
Then, with an unscrupulousness worthy of the time and the cause,
Warwick opened communication with the fugitive Queen, offering her his
services, betrothed his daughter to the young Edward, Prince of Wales,
took up the red Lancastrian rose from the dust of defeat,--brought the
captive he had sent to the tower back to his throne--only to see him
once more dragged down again by the Yorkists--and for the last time
returned to captivity; leaving his wife a prisoner and his young son
dead at Tewksbury, stabbed by Yorkist lords. Henry VI. died in the
Tower, "mysteriously," as did all the deposed and imprisoned Kings;
Warwick was slain in battle, and with Edward IV. the reign of the House
of York commenced.
Such in brief is the story of the "Wars of the Roses" and of the Earl
of Warwick, the "King Maker."
At the close of the Wars of the Roses, {69} feudalism was a ruin. The
oak with its dead roots had been prostrated by the storm. The imposing
system had wrought its own destruction. Eighty Princes of the blood
royal had perished, and more than half of the Nobility had died on the
field or the scaffold, or were fugitives in foreign lands. The great
Duke of Exeter, brother-in-law to a King, was seen barefoot begging
bread from door to door.
By the confiscation of one-fifth of the landed estate of the Kingdom,
vast wealth poured into the King's treasury. He had no need now to
summon Parliament to vote him supplies. The clergy, rendered feeble
and lifeless from decline in spiritual enthusiasm, and by its blind
hostility to the intellectual movement of the time, crept closer to the
throne, while Parliament, with its partially disfranchised House of
Commons, was so rarely summoned that it almost ceased to exist. In the
midst of the general wreck, the Kingship towered in solitary greatness.
Edward IV. was absolute sovereign. He had no one to fear, unless it
was his {70} intriguing brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who,
during the twenty-three years of Edward's reign, was undoubtedly
carefully planning the bloodstained steps by which he himself should
reach the throne.
Acute in intelligence, distorted in form and in character, this Richard
was a monster of iniquity. The hapless boy left heir to the throne
upon the death of Edward IV., his father, was placed under the
guardianship of his misshapen uncle, who until the majority of the
young King, Edward V., was to reign under the title of Protector.
How this "Protector" protected his nephews all know. The two boys
(Edward V. and Richard, Duke of York) were carried to the Tower. The
world has been reluctant to believe that they were really smothered, as
has been said; but the finding, nearly two hundred years later, of the
skeletons of two children which had been buried or concealed at the
foot of the stairs leading to their place of confinement, seems to
confirm it beyond a doubt.
Retribution came swiftly. Two years {71} later Richard fell at the
battle of Bosworth Field, and the crown won by numberless crimes,
rolled under a hawthorn bush. It was picked up and placed upon a
worthier head.
Henry Tudor, an offshoot of the House of Lancaster, was proclaimed King
Henry VII., and his marriage with Princess Elizabeth of York (sister of
the princes murdered in the Tower) forever blended the White and the
Red Rose in peaceful union.
During all this time, while Kings came and Kings went, the people
viewed these changes from afar. But if they had no longer any share in
the government, a great expansion was going on in their inner life.
Caxton had set up his printing press, and the "art preservative of all
arts," was bringing streams of new knowledge into thousands of homes.
Copernicus had discovered a new Heaven, and Columbus a new Earth. The
sun no longer circled around the Earth, nor was the Earth a flat plain.
There was a revival of classic learning at Oxford, and Erasmus, the
great preacher, was founding schools and preparing the minds of the
{72} people for the impending change, which was soon to be wrought by
that Monk in Germany, whose soul was at this time beginning to be
stirred to its mighty effort at reform.
{73}
CHAPTER VI
When in the year 1509 a handsome youth of eighteen came to the throne,
the hopes of England ran high. His intelligence, his frank, genial
manners, his sympathy with the "new learning," won all classes.
Erasmus in his hopes of purifying the Church, and Sir Thomas More in
his "Utopian" dreams for politics and society, felt that a friend had
come to the throne in the young Henry VIII.
Spain had become great through a union of the rival Kingdoms Castile
and Aragon; so a marriage with the Princess Katharine, daughter of
Ferdinand and Isabella, had been arranged for the young Prince Henry,
who had quietly accepted for his Queen his brother's widow, six years
his senior.
France under Francis I. had risen into a state no less imposing than
Spain, and {74} Henry began to be stirred with an ambition, to take
part in the drama of events going on upon the greater stage, across the
Channel. The old dream of French conquest returned. Francis I. and
Charles V. of Germany had commenced their struggle for supremacy in
Europe. Henry's ambition was fostered by their vying with each other
to secure his friendship. He was soon launched in a deep game of
diplomacy, in which three intriguing Sovereigns were striving each to
outwit the others.
What Henry lacked in experience and craft was supplied by his
Chancellor Wolsey, whose private and personal ambition to reach the
Papal Chair was dexterously mingled with the royal game. The game was
dazzling and absorbing, but it was unexpectedly interrupted; and the
golden dreams of Erasmus and More, of a slow and orderly development in
England through an expanding intelligence, were rudely shaken.
Martin Luther audaciously nailed on the door of the Church at
Wittenberg a protest against the selling of papal indulgences, and the
pent-up hopes, griefs and despair of {75} centuries burst into a storm
which shook Europe to its centre.
Since England had joined in the great game of European politics, she
had advanced from being a third-rate power to the front rank among
nations; so it was with great satisfaction that Catholic Europe heard
Henry VIII. denounce the new Reformation, which had swiftly assumed
alarming proportions.
But a woman's eyes were to change all this. As Henry looked into the
fair face of Anne Boleyn, his conscience began to be stirred over his
marriage with his brother's widow, Katharine. He confided his scruples
to Wolsey, who promised to use his efforts with the Pope to secure a
divorce from Katharine. But this lady was aunt to Charles V., the
great Champion of the Church in its fight with Protestantism. It would
never do to alienate him. So the divorce was refused.
Henry VIII. was not as flexible and amiable now as the youth of
eighteen had been. He defied the Pope, married Anne (1533), and sent
his Minister into disgrace {76} for not serving him more effectually.
"There was the weight which pulled me down," said Wolsey of Anne, and
death from a broken heart mercifully saved the old man from the
scaffold he would certainly have reached.
The legion of demons which had been slumbering in the King were
awakened. He would break no law, but he would bend the law to his
will. He commanded a trembling Parliament to pass an act sustaining
his marriage with Anne. Another permitting him to name his successor,
and then another--making him _supreme head of the Church in England_.
The Pope was forever dethroned in his Kingdom, and Protestantism had
achieved a bloodstained victory.
Henry alone could judge what was orthodoxy and what heresy; but to
disagree with _him_, was death. Traitor and heretic went to the
scaffold in the same hurdle; the Catholic who denied the King's
supremacy riding side by side with the Protestant who denied
transubstantiation. The Protestantism of this great convert was
political, not {77} religious; he despised the doctrines of
Lutheranism, and it was dangerous to believe too much and equally
dangerous to believe too little. Heads dropped like leaves in the
forest, and in three years the Queen who had overturned England and
almost Europe, was herself carried to the scaffold (1536).
It was in truth a "Reign of Terror" by an absolutism standing upon the
ruin of every rival. The power of the Barons had gone; the Clergy were
panic-stricken, and Parliament was a servant, which arose and bowed
humbly to his vacant throne at mention of his name! A member for whom
he had sent knelt trembling one day before him. "Get my bill passed
to-morrow, my little man," said the King, "or to-morrow, this head of
yours will be off." The next day the bill passed, and millions of
Church property was confiscated, to be thrown away in gambling, or to
enrich the adherents of the King.
Thomas Cromwell, who had succeeded to Wolsey's vacant place, was his
efficient instrument. This student of Machiavelli's "Prince," without
passion or hate, pity or {78} regret, marked men for destruction, as a
woodman does tall trees, the highest and proudest names in the Kingdom
being set down in his little notebook under the head of either "Heresy"
or "Treason." Sir Thomas More, one of the wisest and best of men,
would not say he thought the marriage with Katharine had been unlawful,
and paid his head as the price of his fearless honesty.
Jane Seymour, whom Henry married the day after Anne Boleyn's execution,
died within a year at the birth of a son (Edward VI.). In 1540
Cromwell arranged another union with the plainest woman in Europe, Anne
of Cleves; which proved so distasteful to Henry that he speedily
divorced her, and in resentment at Cromwell's having entrapped him, by
a flattering portrait drawn by Holbein, the Minister came under his
displeasure, which at that time meant death. He was beheaded in 1540,
and in that same year occurred the King's marriage with Katharine
Howard, who one year later met the same fate as Anne Boleyn.
Katharine Parr, the sixth and last wife, {79} and an ardent Protestant
and reformer, also narrowly escaped, and would undoubtedly at last have
gone to the block. But Henry, who at fifty-six was infirm and wrecked
in health, died in the year 1547, the signing of death-warrants being
his occupation to the very end.
Whatever his motive, Henry VIII. had in making her Protestant, placed
England firmly in the line of the world's highest progress; and strange
to say, that Kingdom is most indebted to two of her worst Kings.
The crown passed to the son of Jane Seymour, Edward VI., a feeble boy
of ten. In view of the doubtful validity of his father's divorce, and
the consequent doubt cast upon the legitimacy of Edward's two sisters,
Mary and Elizabeth, the young king was persuaded to name his cousin
Lady Jane Grey as his heir and successor. This gentle girl of
seventeen, sensitive and thoughtful, a devout reformer, who read Greek
and Hebrew and wrote Latin poetry, is a pathetic figure in history,
where we see her, the unwilling wearer of a crown for ten days, and
{80} then with her young husband hurried to that fatal Tower, and to
death. Upon the death of Edward this unhappy child was proclaimed
Queen of England. But the change in the succession produced an
unexpected uprising, in which even Protestants joined. Lady Jane Grey
was hurried to the block, and the Catholic Mary to the throne. Henry's
divorce was declared void, and his first marriage valid. Elizabeth was
thus set aside by Act of Parliament; and as she waited in the Tower,
while her remorseless sister vainly sought for proofs of her complicity
with the recent rebellion, she was seemingly nearer to a scaffold than
to a throne.
[Illustration: Queen Elizabeth going on board the "Golden Hind." From
the painting by Frank Brangwyn.]
When we remember that there coursed in the veins of Mary Tudor the
blood of cruel Spanish kings, mingled with that of Henry VIII., can we
wonder that she was cruel and remorseless? Her marriage with Philip
II. of Spain quickly overthrew the work of her father. Unlike Henry
VIII., Mary was impelled by deep convictions; and like her grandmother,
Isabella I. of Spain, she persecuted to save from what she believed was
death eternal; and her cruelty, although {81} untempered by one humane
impulse, was still prompted by a sincere fanaticism, with which was
mingled an intense desire to please the Catholic Philip. But Philip
remained obdurately in Spain; and while she was lighting up all England
with a blaze of martyrs, Calais,--over which the English standard
planted by Edward III. had waved for more than 200 years,--Calais, the
last English possession in France, was lost. Amid these crushing
disappointments, public and personal, Mary died (1558), after a reign
of only five years.
Elizabeth with her legitimacy questioned was still under the shadow of
the scaffold upon which her mother had perished. There is reason to
believe that Philip II. turned the delicately balanced scale. It
better suited him to have Elizabeth occupy the throne of England, than
that Mary Stuart, the next nearest heir, should do so. Mary had
married the Dauphin of France; and France was Philip's enemy and rival.
Better far that England should become Protestant, than that France
should hold the balance of power in Europe!
{82}
CHAPTER VII
Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, a disgraced and
decapitated Queen, wore the crown of England. If heredity had been as
much talked of then as now, England might have feared the child of a
faithless wife, and a remorseless, bloodthirsty King. But while Mary,
daughter of Katharine, the most pious and best of mothers, had left
only a great blood-spot upon the page of History, Elizabeth's reign was
to be the most wise, prosperous and great, the Kingdom had ever known.
In her complex character there was the imperiousness, audacity and
unscrupulousness of her father, the voluptuous pleasure-loving nature
of her mother, and mingled with both, qualities which came from
neither. She was a tyrant, held in check by a singular caution, with
an instinctive perception of the {83} presence of danger, to which her
purposes always instantly bent.
The authority vested in her was as absolute as her father's, but while
her imperious temper sacrificed individuals without mercy, she ardently
desired the welfare of her Kingdom, which she ruled with extraordinary
moderation and a political sagacity almost without parallel, softening,
but not abandoning, one of her father's usurpations.
She was a Protestant without any enthusiasm for the religion she
intended to restore in England, and prayed to the Virgin in her own
private Chapel, while she was undoing the work of her Catholic sister
Mary. The obsequious apologies to the Pope were withdrawn, but the
Reformation she was going to espouse, was not the fiery one being
fought for in Germany and France. It was mild, moderate, and like her
father's, more political than religious. The point she made was that
there must be religious uniformity, and conformity to the Established
Church of England--with its new "Articles," which as she often said,
"left _opinion_ free."
It was in fact a softened reproduction of {84} her terrible father's
attitude. The Church, (called an "Episcopacy," on account of the
jurisdiction of its Bishops,) was Protestant in doctrine, with gentle
leaning toward Catholicism in externals, held still firmly by the "Act
of Supremacy" in the controlling hand of the Sovereign. Above all else
desiring peace and prosperity for England, the keynote of Elizabeth's
policy in Church and in State was conciliation and compromise. So the
Church of England was to a great extent a compromise, retaining as much
as the people would bear of external form and ritual, for the sake of
reconciling Catholic England.
The large element to whom this was offensive was reinforced by
returning refugees who brought with them the stern doctrines of Calvin;
and they finally separated themselves altogether from a Church in which
so much of Papacy still lingered, to establish one upon simpler and
purer foundation; hence they were called "Puritans," and
"Nonconformists," and were persecuted for violation of the "Act of
Supremacy."
The masculine side of Elizabeth's {85} character was fully balanced by
her feminine foibles. Her vanity was inordinate. Her love of
adulation and passion for display, her caprice, duplicity, and her
reckless love-affairs, form a strange background for the calm,
determined, masterly statesmanship under which her Kingdom expanded.
The subject of her marriage was a momentous one. There were plenty of
aspirants for the honor. Her brother-in-law Philip, since the
abdication of Charles V., his father, was a mighty King, ruler over
Spain and the Netherlands, and was at the head of Catholic Europe. He
saw in this vain, silly young Queen of England an easy prey. By
marrying her he could bring England back to the fold, as he had done
with her sister Mary, and the Catholic cause would be invincible.
Elizabeth was a coquette, without the personal charm supposed to belong
to that dangerous part of humanity. She toyed with an offer of
marriage as does a cat with a mouse. She had never intended to marry
Philip, but she kept him waiting so long for her decision, and so
exasperated him with {86} her caprice, that he exclaimed at last, "That
girl has ten thousand devils in her." He little thought, that beneath
that surface of folly there was a nature hard as steel, and a calm,
clear, cool intelligence, for which his own would be no match, and
which would one day hold in check the diplomacy of the "Escurial" and
outwit that of Europe. She adored the culture brought by the "new
learning;" delighted in the society of Sir Philip Sidney, who reflected
all that was best in England of that day; talked of poetry with
Spenser; discussed philosophy with Bruno; read Greek tragedies and
Latin orations in the original; could converse in French and Italian,
and was besides proficient in another language,--the language of the
fishwife,--which she used with startling effect with her lords and
ministers when her temper was aroused, and swore like a trooper if
occasion required.
But whatever else she was doing she never ceased to study the new
England she was ruling. She felt, though did not understand, the
expansion which was going {87} on in the spirit of the people; but
instinctively realized the necessity for changes and modifications in
her Government, when the temper of the nation seemed to require it.
It was enormous common-sense and tact which converted Elizabeth into a
liberal Sovereign. Her instincts were despotic. When she bowed
instantly to the will of the Commons, almost apologizing for seeming to
resist it, it was not because she sympathized with liberal sentiments,
but because of her profound political instincts, which taught her the
danger of alienating that class upon which the greatness of her Kingdom
rested. She realized the truth forgotten by some of her successors,
that the Sovereign and the middle class _must be friends_. She might
resist and insult her lords and ministers, send great Earls and
favorites ruthlessly to the block, but no slightest cloud must come
between her and her "dear Commons" and people. This it was which made
Spenser's adulation in the "Faerie Queen" but an expression of the
intense loyalty of her meanest subject.
Perhaps it was because she remembered {88} that the whole fabric of the
Church rested upon Parliamentary enactment, and that she herself was
Queen of England by Parliamentary sanction, that she viewed so
complacently the growing power of that body in dealing more and more
with matters supposed to belong exclusively to the Crown, as for
instance in the struggle made by the Commons to suppress monopolies in
trade, granted by royal prerogative. At the first she angrily resisted
the measure. But finding the strength of the popular sentiment, she
gracefully retreated, declaring, with royal scorn for truth, that "she
had not before known of the existence of such an evil."
In fact, lying, in her independent code of morals, was a virtue, and
one to which she owed some of her most brilliant triumphs in diplomacy.
And when the bald, unmitigated lie was at last found out, she felt not
the slightest shame, but only amusement at the simplicity of those who
had believed she was speaking the truth.
Her natural instincts, her thrift, and her love of peace inclined her
to keep aloof {89} from the struggle going on in Europe between
Protestants and Catholics. But while the news of St. Bartholomew's Eve
seemed to give her no thrill of horror, she still sent armies and money
to aid the Huguenots in France, and to stem the persecutions of Philip
in the Netherlands, and committed England fully to a cause for which
she felt no enthusiasm. She encouraged every branch of industry,
commerce, trade, fostered everything which would lead to prosperity.
Listened to Raleigh's plans for colonization in America, permitting the
New Colony to be called "Virginia" in her honor (the Virgin Queen).
She chartered the "Merchant Company," intended to absorb the new trade
with the Indies (1600), and which has expanded into a British Empire in
India.
But amid all this triumph, a sad and solitary woman sat on the throne
of England. The only relation she had in the world was her cousin,
Mary Stuart, who was plotting to undermine and supplant her.
The question of Elizabeth's legitimacy was an ever recurring one, and
afforded a {90} rallying point for malcontents, who asserted that her
mother's marriage with Henry VIII. was invalidated by the refusal of
the Pope to sanction the divorce. Mary Stuart, who stood next to
Elizabeth in the succession, formed a centre from which a network of
intrigue and conspiracy was always menacing the Queen's peace, if not
her life, and her crown.
Scotland, since the extinction of the line of Bruce, had been ruled by
the Stuart Kings. Torn by internal feuds between her clans, and by the
incessant struggle against English encroachments, she had drawn into
close friendship with France, which country used her for its own ends,
in harassing England, so that the Scottish border was always a point of
danger in every quarrel between French and English Kings.
In 1502 Henry VIII. had bestowed the hand of his sister Margaret upon
James IV. of Scotland, and it seemed as if a peaceful union was at last
secured with his Northern neighbor. But in the war with France which
soon followed, James, the Scottish King, turned to his old ally. He
was killed at {91} "Flodden Field," after suffering a crushing defeat.
His successor, James V., had married Mary Guise. Her family was the
head and front of the ultra Catholic party in France, and her counsels
probably influenced James to a continual hostility to the Protestant
Henry, even though he was his uncle. The death of James in consequence
of his defeat at "Solway Moss" occurred immediately after the birth of
his daughter, Mary Stuart (1542).
This unhappy child at once became the centre of intriguing designs;
Henry VIII. wishing to betroth the little Queen to his son, afterwards
Edward VI., and thus forever unite the rival kingdoms. But the Guises
made no compromises with Protestants! Mary Guise, who was now Regent
of the realm, had no desire for a closer union with Protestant England,
and very much desired a nearer alliance with her own France. Mary
Stuart was betrothed to the Dauphin, grandson of Francis I., and was
sent to the French Court to be prepared by Catharine de Medici (the
Italian daughter-in-law of Francis I.) for her future exalted position.
{92}
In 1561, Mary returned to England. Her boy-husband had died after a
reign of two years. She was nineteen years old, had wonderful beauty,
rare intelligence, and power to charm like a siren. Her short life had
been spent in the most corrupt and profligate of Courts, under the
combined influence of Catharine de Medici, the worst woman in
Europe,--and her two uncles of the House of Guise, who were little
better. Political intrigues, plottings and crimes were in the very air
she breathed from infancy. But she was an ardent and devout Catholic,
and as such became the centre and the hope of what still remained of
Catholic England.
Elizabeth would have bartered half her possessions for the one
possession of beauty. That she was jealous of her fascinating rival
there is little doubt, but that she was exasperated at her pretensions
and at the audacious plottings against her life and throne is not
strange. In fact we wonder that, with her imperious temper, she so
long hesitated to strike the fatal blow.
Whether Mary committed the dark crimes {93} attributed to her or not,
we do not know. But we do know, that after the murder of her wretched
husband, Lord Darnley, (her cousin, Henry Stuart), she quickly married
the man to whom the deed was directly traced. Her marriage with
Bothwell was her undoing. Scotland was so indignant at the act, that
she took refuge in England, only to fall into Elizabeth's hands.
Mary Stuart had once audaciously said, "the reason her cousin did not
marry was because she would not lose the power of compelling men to
make love to her." Perhaps the memory of this jest made it easier to
sign the fatal paper in 1587.
When we read of Mary's irresistible charm, of her audacity, her
cunning, her genius for diplomacy and statecraft, far exceeding
Elizabeth's--when we read of all this and think of the blood of the
Guises in her veins, and the precepts of Catharine de Medici in her
heart, we realize what her usurpation would have meant for England, and
feel that she was a menace to the State, and justly incurred her fate.
Then again, when we hear of her gentle patience in her {94} long
captivity, her prayers and piety, and her sublime courage when she
walked through the Hall at Fotheringay Castle, and laid her beautiful
head on the block as on a pillow, we are melted to pity, and almost
revolted at the act. It is difficult to be just, with such a lovely
criminal, unless one is made of such stern stuff as was John Knox. The
son of Mary by Henry Stuart (Lord Darnley) was James VI. of Scotland.
His pretensions to the English throne were now seemingly forever at
rest. But Philip of Spain thought the time propitious for his own
ambitious purposes, and sent an Armada (fleet) which approached the
Coast in the form of a great Crescent, one mile across. The little
English "seadogs," not much larger than small pleasure yachts, were led
by Sir Francis Drake. They worried the ponderous Spanish ships, and
then, sending burning boats in amongst them, soon spoiled the pretty
crescent. The fleet scattered along the Northern Coast, where it was
overtaken by a frightful storm, and the winds and the waves completed
the victory, almost annihilating the entire "Armada."
{95}
England was great and glorious. The revolution, religious, social and
political, had ploughed and harrowed the surface which had been
fertilized with the "New Learning," and the harvest was rich. While
all Europe was devastated by religious wars there arose in Protestant
England such an era of peace and prosperity, with all the conditions of
living so improved that the dreams of Sir Thomas More's "Utopia" seemed
almost realized. The new culture was everywhere. England was
garlanded with poetry, and lighted by genius, such as the world has not
seen since, and may never see again. The name of Francis Bacon was
sufficient to adorn an age, and that of Shakespeare alone, enough to
illumine a century. Elizabeth did not create the glory of the
"Elizabethan Age," but she did create the peace and social order from
which it sprang.
If this Queen ever loved any one it was the Earl of Leicester, the man
who sent his lovely wife, Amy Robsart, to a cruel death in the delusive
hope of marrying a Queen. We are unwilling to harbor the suspicion
{96} that she was accessory to this deed; and yet we cannot forget that
she was the daughter of Henry VIII.!--and sometimes wonder if the
memory of a crime as black as Mary's haunted her sad old age, when
sated with pleasures and triumphs, lovers no more whispering adulation
in her ears, and mirrors banished from her presence, she silently
waited for the end.
She died in the year 1603, and succumbing to the irony of fate,--and
possibly as an act of reparation for the fatal paper signed in
1587,--she named the son of Mary Stuart, James VI. of Scotland, her
successor.--James I. of England.
{97}
CHAPTER VIII
The House of Stuart had peacefully reached the long coveted throne of
England in the person of a most unkingly King. Gross in appearance and
vulgar in manners, James had none of the royal attributes of his
mother. A great deal of knowledge had been crammed into a very small
mind. Conceited, vain, pedantic, headstrong, he set to work with the
confidence of ignorance to carry out his undigested views upon all
subjects, reversing at almost every point the policy of his great
predecessor. Where she with supreme tact had loosened the screws so
that the great authority vested in her might not press too heavily upon
the nation, he tightened them. Where she bowed her imperious will to
that of the Commons, this puny tyrant insolently defied it, and
swelling with sense of his own {98} greatness, claimed "Divine right"
for Kingship and demanded that his people should say "the King can do
no wrong," "to question his authority is to question that of God." If
he ardently supported the Church of England, it was because he was its
head. The Catholic who would have turned the Church authority over
again to the Pope, and the "Puritans" who resisted the "Popish
practices" of the Reformed Church of England, were equally hateful to
him, for one and the same reason; they were each aiming to diminish his
authority.
When the Puritans brought to him a petition signed by 800 clergymen,
praying that they be not compelled to wear the surplice, nor make the
sign of the cross at baptism--he said they were "vipers," and if they
did not submit to the authority of the Bishops in such matters "they
should be harried out of the land." In the persecution implied by this
threat, a large body of Puritans escaped to Holland with their
families, and thence came that band of heroic men and women on the
"Mayflower," landing at a point on the American Coast which they {99}
called "Plymouth" (1620). A few Englishmen had in 1607 settled in
Jamestown, Virginia. These two colonies contained the germ of the
future "United States of America."
The persecution of the Catholics led to a plot to blow up Parliament
House at a time when the King was present, thinking thus at one stroke
to get rid of a usurping tyrant, and of a House of Commons which was
daily becoming more and more infected with Puritanism. The discovery
of this "Guy Fawkes gunpowder plot," prevented its consummation, and
immensely strengthened Puritan sentiment.
The keynote of Elizabeth's foreign policy had been hostility to Spain,
that Catholic stronghold, and an unwavering adherence to Protestant
Europe. James saw in that great and despotic government the most
suitable friend for such a great King as himself. He proposed a
marriage between his son Charles and the Infanta, daughter of the King
of Spain, making abject promises of legislation in his Kingdom
favorable to the Catholics; and when an indignant House {100} of
Commons protested against the marriage, they were insolently
reprimanded for meddling with things which did not concern them, and
were sent home, not to be recalled again until the King's necessities
for money compelled him to summon them.
During the early part of his reign the people seem to have been
paralyzed and speechless before his audacious pretensions. Great
courtiers were fawning at his feet listening to his pedantic wisdom,
and humoring his theory of the "Divine right" of hereditary Kingship.
And alas!--that we have to say it--Francis Bacon (his Chancellor), with
intellect towering above his century,--was his obsequious servant and
tool, uttering not one protest as one after another the liberties of
the people were trampled upon!
But this Spanish marriage had aroused a spirit before which a wiser man
than James would have trembled. He was standing midway between two
scaffolds, that of his mother (1587), and his son (1649). Every blow
he struck at the liberties of England cut deep into the foundation of
his throne. {101} And when he violated the law of the land by the
imposition of taxes, without the sanction of his Parliament, he had
"sowed the wind" and the "whirlwind," which was to break on his son's
head was inevitable. Popular indignation began to be manifest, and
Puritan members of the Commons began to use language the import of
which could not be mistaken. Bacon was disgraced; his crime,--while
ostensibly the "taking of bribes,"--was in reality his being the
servile tool of the King.
In reviewing the acts of this reign we see a foolish Sovereign ruled by
an intriguing adventurer whom he created Duke of Buckingham. We see
him foiled in his attempt to link the fate of England with that of
Catholic Europe;--sacrificing Sir Walter Raleigh because he had given
offense to Spain, the country whose friendship he most desired. We see
numberless acts of folly, and but three which we can commend. James
did authorize and promote the translation of the Bible which has been
in use until to-day. He named his double Kingdom of England and
Scotland "Great Britain." {102} These two acts, together with his death
in 1625, meet with our entire approval.
Charles I., son of James, was at least one thing which his father was
not. He was a gentleman. Had it not been his misfortune to inherit a
crown, his scholarly refinements and exquisite tastes, his
irreproachable morals, and his rectitude in the personal relations of
life, might have won him only esteem and honor. But these qualities
belonged to Charles Stuart the gentleman. Charles the King was
imperious, false, obstinate, blind to the conditions of his time, and
ignorant of the nature of his people. Every step taken during his
reign led him nearer to its fatal consummation.
No family in Europe ever grasped at power more unscrupulously than the
Guises in France. They were cruel and remorseless in its pursuit. It
was the warm southern blood of her mother which was Mary Stuart's ruin.
She was a Guise,--and so was her son James I.--and so was Charles I.,
her grandson. There was despotism and tyranny in their blood. Their
very natures made it impossible that they should {103} comprehend the
Anglo-Saxon ideal of civil liberty.
Who can tell what might have been the course of History, if England had
been ruled by English Kings, which it has not been since the Conquest.
With every royal marriage there is a fresh infusion of foreign blood
drawn from fountains not always the purest,--until after centuries of
such dilutions, the royal line has less of the Anglo-Saxon in it than
any ancestral line in the Kingdom.
The odious Spanish marriage had been abandoned and Charles had married
Henrietta, sister of Louis XIII. of France.
The subject of religion was the burning one at that time. It soon
became apparent that the new King's personal sympathies leaned as far
as his position permitted toward Catholicism. The Church of England
under its new Primate, Archbishop Laud, was being drawn farther away
from Protestantism and closer to Papacy; while Laud in order to secure
Royal protection advocated the absolutism of the King, saying that
James in his theory of "Divine right" had {104} been inspired by the
Holy Ghost, thus turning religion into an engine of attack upon English
liberties. Laud's ideal was a purified Catholicism--retaining
auricular confession, prayers for the dead, the Real Presence in the
Sacrament, genuflexions and crucifixes, all of which were odious to
Puritans and Presbyterians. He had a bold, narrow mind, and recklessly
threw himself against the religious instincts of the time. The same
pulpit from which was read a proclamation ordering that the Sabbath be
treated as a holiday, and not a Holy-day, was also used to tell the
people that resistance to the King's will was "Eternal damnation."
This made the Puritans seem the defenders of the liberties of the
country, and drew hosts of conservative Churchmen, such as Pym, to
their side, although not at all in sympathy with a religious fanaticism
which condemned innocent pleasures, and all the things which adorn
life, as mere devices of the devil. Such were the means by which the
line was at last sharply drawn. The Church of England and tyranny on
one {105} side, and Puritanism and liberty on the other.
But there was one thing which at this moment was of deeper interest to
the King than religion. He wanted,--he must have,--money. _Religion_
and _money_ are the two things upon which the fate of nations has
oftenest hung. These two dangerous factors were both present now, and
they were going to make history very fast.
On account of a troublesome custom prevailing in his Kingdom, Charles
must first summon his Parliament, and they must grant the needed
supplies. His father had by the discovery of the theory of "Divine
right," prepared the way to throw off these Parliamentary trammels.
But that could only be reached by degrees. So Parliament was summoned.
It had no objection to voting the needed subsidies, but,--the King must
first promise certain reforms, political and religious, and--dismiss
his odious Minister Buckingham.
Charles, indignant at this outrage, dissolved the body, and appealed to
the country for a loan. The same reply came from {106} every quarter.
"We will gladly lend the money, but it must be done through
Parliament." The King was thoroughly aroused. If the loan will not be
voluntary, it must be forced. A tax was levied, fines and penalties
for its resistance meted out by subservient judges.
John Hampden was one of the earliest victims. His means were ample,
the sum was small, but his manhood was great. "Not one farthing, if it
cost me my life," was his reply as he sat in the prison at Gate House.
The supply did not meet the King's demand. Overwhelmed with debt and
shame and rage, he was obliged again to resort to the hated means.
Parliament was summoned. The Commons, with memory of recent outrages
in their hearts, were more determined than before. The members drew up
a "_Petition of Right_," which was simply a reaffirmation of the
inviolability of the rights of person, of property and of speech--a
sort of second "Magna Charta."
They resolutely and calmly faced their King, the "Petition" in one
hand, the {107} granted subsidies in the other. For a while he defied
them; but the judges were whispering in his ear that the "Petition"
would not be binding upon him, and Buckingham was urging him to yield.
Perhaps it was Charles Stuart the gentleman who hesitated to receive
money in return for solemn promises which he did not intend to keep!
But Charles the King signed the paper, which seven judges out of
twelve, in the highest court of the realm, were going to pronounce
invalid because the King's power was beyond the reach of Parliament.
It was inherent in him as King, and bestowed by God. _Any infringement
upon his prerogative by Act of Parliament was void_!
With king so false, and with justice so polluted at its fountain, what
hope was there for the people but in Revolution?
From the tyranny of the Church under Laud, a way was opened when, in
1629, Charles granted a Charter to the Colony of Massachusetts. With a
quiet, stern enthusiasm the hearts of men turned toward that refuge in
America. Not men of broken fortunes, adventurers, and criminals, but
{108} owners of large landed estates, professional men, some of the
best in the land, who abandoned home and comfort to face intolerable
hardships. One wrote, "We are weaned from the delicate milk of our
Mother England and do not mind these trials." As the pressure
increased under Laud, the stream toward the West increased in volume;
so that in ten years 20,000 Englishmen had sought religious freedom
across the sea, and had founded a Colony which, strange to say,--under
the influence of an intense religious sentiment,--became itself a
Theocracy and a new tyranny, although one sternly just and pure.
The dissolute, worthless Buckingham had been assassinated, and Charles
had wept passionate tears over his dead body. But his place had been
filled by one far better suited to the King's needs at a time when he
had determined not again to recall Parliament, but to rule without it
until resistance to his measures had ceased.
It was with no sinister purpose of establishing a despotism such as a
stronger man might have harbored, that he made this {109} resolve.
What Charles wanted was simply the means of filling his exchequer; and
if Parliament would not give him that except by a dicker for reforms,
and humiliating pledges which he could not keep, why then he would find
new ways of raising money without them. His father had done it before
him, he had done it himself. With no Commons there to rate and insult
him, it could be done without hindrance.
He was not grand enough, nor base enough, nor was he rich enough, to
carry out any organized design upon the country. He simply wanted
money, and had such blind confidence in Kingship, that any very serious
resistance to his authority did not enter his dreams. It was the
limitations of his intelligence which proved his ruin, his inability to
comprehend a new condition in the spirit of his people. Elizabeth
would have felt it, though she did not understand it, and would have
loosened the screws, without regard for her personal preferences, and
by doing it, so bound the people to her, that her policy would have
been their policy. Charles was as wise as the {110} engineer who would
rivet down the safety-valves!
Sir Thomas Wentworth (Earl Strafford), who had taken the place of
Buckingham, was an apostate from the party of liberty. Disappointed in
becoming a leader in the Commons he had drawn gradually closer to the
King, who now leaned upon him as the vine upon the oak.
This man's ideal was to build up in England just such a despotism as
Richelieu was building in France. The same imperious temper, the same
invincible will and administrative genius, marked him as fitted for the
work. While Charles was feebly scheming for revenue, he was laying
large and comprehensive plans for a system of oppression, which should
_yield_ the revenue,--and for Arsenals and Forts--and a standing Army,
and a rule of terror which should hold the nation in subjection while
these things were preparing. He was clear-sighted enough to see that
"absolutism" was not to be accomplished by a system of reasoning. He
would not urge it as a dogma, but as a fact.
The "Star Chamber," a tribunal for the {111} trying of a certain class
of offences, was brought to a state of fresh efficiency. Its
punishments could be anything this side of death. A clergyman accused
of speaking disrespectfully of Laud, is condemned to pay £5,000 to the
King, £300 to the aggrieved Archbishop himself, one side of his nose is
to be slit, one ear cut off, and one cheek branded. The next week this
to be repeated on the other side, and then followed by imprisonment
subject to pleasure of the Court. Another who has written a book
considered seditious, has the same sentence carried out, only varied by
imprisonment for life.
These were some of the embellishments of the system called "Thorough,"
which was carried on by the two friends and confederates, Laud and
Strafford, who were in their pleasant letters to each other all the
time lamenting that the power of the "Star Chamber" was so limited, and
judges so timid! Is it strange that the plantation in Massachusetts
had fresh recruits?
But the more serious work was going on under Strafford's vigorous
management. {112} "Monopolies" were sold once more, with a fixed duty
on profits added to the price of the original concession. Every
article in use by the people was at last bought up by Monopolists, who
were compelled to add to the price of these commodities, to compensate
for the tax they must pay into the King's Treasury.
"_Ship Money_" was a tax supposably for the building of a Navy, for
which there was no accounting to the people, the amount and frequency
of the levy being discretionary with the King. It was always possible
and imminent, and was the most odious of all the methods adopted for
wringing money from the nation, while resistance to it, as to all other
such measures, was punished by the Star Chamber in such pleasant
fashion as would please Strafford and Laud, whose creatures the judges
were.
Hampden, as before, championed the rights of the people in his own
person, going to prison and facing death, if it were necessary, rather
than pay the amount of 20 shillings. But that the taxes were paid by
the people is evident, for so {113} successful was this scheme of
revenue that many predicted the King would never again call a
Parliament. What would be the need of a Parliament, if he did not
require money? The Royalists were pleased, and the people were wisely
patient, knowing that such a financial fabric must fall at the first
breath of a storm, and then their time would come.
{114}
CHAPTER IX
The storm came in the form of a war upon Scotland, to enforce the
established Church, which it had cast out "root and branch" for the
Presbyterianism which pleased it. The Loyalists were alarmed by rumors
that Scotland was holding treasonable communication with her old ally,
France; and after an interval of eleven years, a Parliament was
summoned, which was destined to outlive the King.
The Commons came together in stern temper, Pym standing promptly at the
Bar of the House of Lords with Strafford's impeachment for High
Treason. The great Earl's apologists among the Lords, his own
ingenious and powerful pleadings, the King's entreaties and worthless
promises, all were in vain.
The King saw the whole fabric of tyranny {115} crumbling before his
eyes. He was over-awed and dared not refuse his signature to the fatal
paper. It is said that as Strafford passed to the block, Laud, who was
at the window of the room where he too was a prisoner, fainted as his
old companion in cruelty stopped to say farewell to him.
There were a few moments of silence, then,--a wild exultant shout.
"His head is off--His head is off."
The execution of the Archbishop swiftly followed, then the abolition of
the Star Chamber, and of the High Commission Court; then a bill was
passed requiring that Parliament be summoned once in three years, and a
law enacted _forbidding its dissolution except by its own consent_.
They were rapidly nearing the conception that Parliament does not exist
by sanction of the King, but the King by sanction of Parliament.
What could be done with a King whom no promises could bind--who, while
in the act of giving solemn pledges to Parliament in order to save
Strafford, was perfidiously planning to overawe it by military force?
{116} The attempted arrest of Hampden, Pym, and three other leaders was
part of this "Army Plot," which made civil war inevitable. The trouble
had resolved itself into a deadly conflict between King and Parliament.
If he resorted to arms, so must they.
If Hampden stands out pre-eminent as the Champion who like a great
Gladiator fought the battle of civil freedom, Pym is no less
conspicuous in having grasped the principles on which it must be
fought. He saw that if either Crown or Parliament must go down, better
for England that it should be the crown. He saw also, that the vital
principle in Parliament lay in the House of Commons. If the King
refused to act with them, it should be treated as an abdication, and
Parliament must act without him, and if the Lords obstructed reform,
then they must be told that the Commons must act alone, rather than let
the Kingdom perish.
This was the theory upon which the future action was based.
Revolutionary and without precedent it has since been accepted {117} as
the correct construction of English Constitutional principles.
Better would it have been for Charles had he let the ship sail, which
was to have borne Hampden and Oliver Cromwell (cousin of the latter)
toward the "Valley of the Connecticut." When he gave that order, he
recalled the man who was to be his evil genius. Cromwell could not so
accurately have defined the constitutional right of his cause as Pym
had done, nor make himself its adored head as was Hampden; but he had a
more compelling genius than either. His figure stands up colossal and
grim away above all others from the time he raised his praying,
psalm-singing army, until the defeat of the King's forces at Naseby
(1645), the flight of the King and his subsequent surrender.
[Illustration: Cromwell dissolving the Long Parliament, 1653. Having
commanded the soldiers to clear the hall, he himself went out last, and
ordered the doors to be locked. From the drawing by Seymour Lucas.]
It was at this time that Cromwell began to manifest as much ability as
a political as he had done as a military leader. Hampden had fallen on
the battlefield, Pym was dead, he was virtual head of the cause.
Perhaps it needed just such a terrible, uncompromising instrument, to
carry {118} England over such a crisis as was before her. Not
overscrupulous about means, no troublesome theories about Church or
State--no reverence for anything but God and "the Gospel."
When Parliament halted and hesitated at the last about the trial of the
King, it was the iron hand of Cromwell which strangled opposition, by
placing a body of troops at the door, and excluding 140 doubtful
members. A Parliament, with the House of Lords effaced, and with 140
obstructing members excluded, leaving only a small body of men of the
same mind, sustained by the moral sentiment of a Cromwellian Army,--can
scarcely be called a Representative body; nor can it be considered
competent to create a Court for the trial of a King! It was only
justifiable as a last and desperate measure of self-defence.
Charles wins back some of our sympathy and esteem by dying like a brave
man and a gentleman. He conducted himself with marvellous dignity and
self-possession throughout the trial, and at the end of {119} seven
days, laid his head upon the block in front of his royal palace of
Whitehall.
That small body of men, calling itself the "House of Commons," declared
England a "Commonwealth," which was to be governed without any King or
House of Lords. Cromwell was "Lord Protector of England, Scotland and
Ireland." He scorned to be called King, but no King was ever more
absolute in authority. It was a righteous tyranny, replacing a vicious
one.
There was no longer an eager hand dipping into the pockets of the
people, compelling the poor to share his scanty earnings with the King.
There was safety, and there was prosperity. But there was rage and
detestation, as Cromwell's soldiers with gibes and jeers, hewed and
hacked at venerable altars and pictures, and insulted the religious
sentiment of one-half the people. Empty niches, mutilated carvings,
and fragments of stained glass, from
"Windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light,"
show us to-day the track of those profane fanatics.
{120}
When the remnant of the House of Commons calling itself a Parliament
was not alert enough in its obedience, Cromwell marched into the Hall
with a company of musketeers, and calling them names neither choice nor
flattering, ordered them to "get out," then locked the door, and put
the key into his pocket. Such was the "dissolution" of a Parliament
which had been strong enough to overthrow a Government, and to send a
King to the Scaffold! This might be fittingly described as a
_personal_ Government!
He was loved by none but the Army. There was no strong current of
popular sentiment to uphold him as he carried out his arbitrary
purposes; no engines of cruelty to fortify his authority; no "Star
Chamber" to enforce his order. Men were not being nailed by the ears
to the pillory, nor mutilated and branded, for resisting his will. But
the spectacle was for that reason all the more astonishing: a great
nation, full of rage, hate and bitterness, but silent and submissive
under the spell of one dominating personality.
{121}
He had no experience in diplomatic usages, no skilled ministers to
counsel and warn, but by his foreign policy he made himself the terror
of Europe; Spain, France, and the United Provinces courting his
friendship, while Protestantism had protection at home and abroad.
That the man who did this had a commanding genius, all must be agreed.
But whether he was the incarnation of evil, or of righteousness, must
ever remain in dispute. We shall never know whether or not his death,
in 1658, cut short a career which might have passed from a justifiable
to an unjustifiable tyranny.
A fabric held up by one sustaining hand, must fall when that hand is
withdrawn. Cromwell left none who could support his burden. Charles
II., who had been more than once foiled in trying to get in by the back
door of his father's kingdom, was now invited to enter by the front,
and amid shouts of joy was placed on the throne.
{122}
CHAPTER X
Time brings its revenges. The instinct for beauty, and for joy and
gladness, had been for twenty-one years repressed by harshly
administered Puritanism. There was a thrill of delight in greeting a
gracious, smiling king, who would lift the spell of gloom from the
nation. Charles did this, more fully than was expected. Never was the
law of reaction more fully demonstrated! The Court was profligate, and
the age licentious. The reign of Charles was an orgy. When he needed
more money for his pleasures, he bargained with Louis XIV. to join that
king in a war upon Protestantism in Holland, for the consideration of
£200,000!
We wonder how he dared thus to goad and prod the British Lion, which
had devoured his Father. But that animal had {123} grown patient since
the Protectorate. England treated Charles like a spoiled child whose
follies entertained her, and whose misdemeanors she had not the heart
to punish.
The "Roundheads," who had trampled upon the "Cavaliers," were now
trampled upon in return. But even at such a time as this the liberties
of the people were expanding. The Act of "Habeas Corpus" forever
prevented imprisonment, without showing in Court just cause for the
detention of the prisoner.
The House of Stuart, those children of the Guises, was always Catholic
at heart, and Charles was at no pains to conceal his preferences. A
wave of Catholicism alarmed the people, who tried to divert the
succession from James, the brother of the King, who was extreme and
fanatical in his devotion to the Church of Rome. But in 1685, the
Masks and routs and revels were interrupted. The pleasure-loving
Charles, who "had never said a foolish thing, and never done a wise
one," lay dead in his palace at Whitehall, and James II. was King of
England.
{124}
Three names have illumined this reign, in other respects so inglorious.
In 1666 Newton discovered the law of gravitation and created a new
theory of the Universe. In 1667 Milton published "Paradise Lost," and
in 1672 Bunyan gave to the world his allegory, "Pilgrim's Progress."
There was no inspiration to genius in the cause of King and Cavaliers.
But the stern problems of Puritanism touched two souls with the divine
afflatus. The sacred Epic of Milton, sublime in treatment as in
conception, must ever stand unique and solitary in literature; while
"Pilgrim's Progress," in plain homely dish served the same heavenly
food. The theme of both was the problem of sin and redemption with
which the Puritan soul was gloomily struggling.
The reign of James II. was the last effort of royal despotism to
recover its own. He tried to recall the right of Habeas Corpus;--to
efface Parliament--and to overawe the Clergy, while insidiously
striving to establish Papacy as the religion of the Kingdom. Chief
Justice Jeffries, that most brutal of men, was his efficient aid, and
boasted that {125} he had in the service of James hanged more traitors
than all his predecessors since the Conquest!
The names Whig and Tory had come into existence in this struggle. Whig
standing for the opponents to Catholic domination, and Tory for the
upholders of the King. But so flagrantly was the Catholic policy of
James conducted, that his upholders were few. In three years from his
accession, Whig and Tory alike were so alarmed, that they secretly sent
an invitation to the King's son-in-law, William, Prince of Orange, to
come and accept the Crown.
William responded at once, and when he landed with 14,000 men, James,
paralyzed, powerless, unable to raise a force to meet him, abandoned
his throne without a struggle and took refuge in France.
The throne was formally declared vacant and William and Mary his wife
were invited to rule jointly the Kingdom of England, Ireland and
Scotland (1689).
The House of Stuart, which seems to have brought not one single virtue
to the throne, {126} was always secretly conspiring with Catholicism in
Europe. Louis XIV., as the head of Catholic Europe at this time, was
the natural protector of the dethroned King. His aim had long been, to
bring England into the Catholic European alliance, and, of course, if
possible, to make it a dependency of France. A conspiracy with Louis
to accomplish this end occupied England's exiled King during the rest
of his life.
But European Protestantism had for its leader the man who now sat upon
the throne of England. In fact he had probably accepted that throne in
order to further his larger plans for defeating the expanding power of
Louis XIV. in Europe. Broad and comprehensive in his statesmanship,
noble and just in character, an able military leader, England was safe
in his strong hand. Conspiracies were put down, one French army after
another, with the despicable James at its head, was driven back; the
purpose at one time being to establish James at the head of an
independent Kingdom in Catholic Ireland. But that would-be King of
Ireland was humiliated and sent {127} back to France by the battle of
Boyne (1690).
As important as was all this, things of even greater moment were going
on in the life of England at this time. As a wise householder employs
the hours of sunshine to repair the leaks revealed by the storm, just
so Parliament now set about strengthening and riveting the weak spots
revealed by the storms which had swept over England.
What the "_Magna Charta_" and "_Petition of Right_" had asserted in a
general way, was now by the "_Bill of Rights_," established by specific
enactments, which one after another declared what the King should and
what he should not do. One of these Acts touched the very central
nerve of English freedom.
If _religion_ and _money_ are the two important factors in the life of
a nation, it is _money_ upon which its life from day to day depends! A
Government can exist without money about as long as a man without air!
So the act which gave to the House of Commons exclusive power to grant
supplies, {128} and also to determine to what use they shall be
applied, transferred the real authority to the people, whose will the
Commons express.
The struggle between the Crown and Parliament ends with this, and the
theory of Pym is vindicated. The Sovereign and the House of Lords from
that time could no more take money from the Treasury of England, than
from that of France. Henceforth there can be no differences between
King and people. _They must be friends_. A Ministry which forfeits
the friendship of the Commons, cannot stand an hour, and supplies will
stop until they are again in accord. In other words, the Government of
England had become a Government _of the people_.
William regarded these enactments as evidence of a lack of confidence
in him. Conscious of his own magnanimous aims, of his power and his
purpose to serve England as she had not been served before, he felt
hurt and wounded at fetters which had not been placed upon such Kings
as Charles I. and his sons. We wonder that a man so exalted and so
superior, did not {129} see that it was for future England that these
laws were framed, for a time when perhaps a Prince not generous, and
noble, and pure should be upon the throne.
William was silent, grave, cold, reserved almost to sternness. He had
none of the qualities which awaken personal enthusiasm. He was one of
those great leaders who are worshipped from afar. Besides, it is not
an easy task to rule another's household. Benefits however great,
reforms however wise, are sure to be considered an impertinence by
some. Then--there might be another "Restoration," and wary ambitious
nobles were cautiously making a record which would not unfit them for
its benefits when it came. He lived in an atmosphere of conspiracy,
suspicion, and loyalty grudgingly bestowed. But these were only the
surface currents. Anglo-Saxon England recognized in this foreign King,
a man with the same race instincts, the same ideals of integrity,
honor, justice and personal liberty, as her own; qualities possessed by
few of her native sovereigns since the good King Alfred.
{130}
The expensive wars carried on against James and his confederate, Louis
XIV., compelled loans which were the beginning of the National Debt.
That and the establishing of the Bank of England, form part of the
history of this reign.
In 1702 William died, and Mary having also died a few years earlier,
the succession passed to her sister Anne, who was to be the last
Sovereign of the House of Stuart.
{131}
CHAPTER XI
William's policy had not been bounded by his Island Kingdom. It
included the cause of Protestant Europe. An apparently invincible King
sat on the throne of France, gradually drawing all adjacent Kingdoms
into his dominion. When in defiance of past pledges he placed his
grandson upon the vacant throne of Spain, and declared that the
Pyrenees should exist no more, even Catholic Austria revolted, and
beginning to fear Louis more than Protestantism, new combinations were
formed, England still holding aloof, and striving to keep out of the
Alliance. But that all-absorbing King had long ago fixed his eye upon
England as his future prey, and when he refused to recognize Anne as
lawful Queen and declared his intention of placing the "Pretender," son
of King James, {132} upon the throne, there could be no more
hesitation. This Jupiter who had removed the Pyrenees, might wipe out
the English Channel too! Hitherto the name Whig had stood for the
adherents to the war policy, and Tory for its opponents. Now, all was
changed. Even the stupid Anne and her Tory friends saw that William's
policy must be her policy if she would keep her Kingdom.
Fortunate was it for England, and for Europe at this time that a
"Marlborough" had climbed to distinction by a slender, and not too
reputable ladder. This man, John Churchill, who a few years ago had
been unknown, without training, almost without education, was by pure
genius fitted to become, upon the death of William, the guiding spirit
of the Grand Alliance.
He had none of the qualities possessed by William, and all the
qualities that leader had not. He had no moral grandeur, no stern
adherence to principles. Whig and Tory were alike to him, and he
followed whichever seemed to lead to success, and to the richest
rewards. He was perfectly sordid in his aims, invincible in his good
{133} nature, with a careless, easy _bonhomie_ which captured the
hearts of Europeans, who called him "the handsome Englishman." As
adroit in managing men as armies, as wise in planning political moves
as campaigns, using tact and diplomacy as effectually as artillery, he
assumed the whole direction of the European war; managed every
negotiation, planned every battle, and achieved its great and
overwhelming success.
"Blenheim" turned the tide of French victory, and broke the spell of
Louis' invincibility. The loss at that battle was something more than
men and fortresses. It was _prestige_, and that self-confidence which
had made the great King believe that nothing could resist his purposes.
It was a new sensation for him to bend his neck, and to say that he
acknowledged Anne Queen of England.
Marlborough received as his reward the splendid estate upon which was
built the palace of "Blenheim." Then, when in the sunshine of peace
England needed him no more, Anne quarrelled with his wife, her {134}
adored friend, and cast him aside as a rusty sword no longer of use.
But for years Europe heard the song "Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre," and
his awe-inspiring name was used to frighten children in France and in
England.
His passionate love for his wife, Sarah Churchill, ran like a golden
thread of romance through Marlborough's stormy career. On the eve of
battle, and in the first flush of victory, he must first and last write
her; and he would more willingly meet 20,000 Frenchmen than his wife's
displeasure! Indeed Sarah seems to have waged her own battles very
successfully with her tongue, and also to have had her own diplomatic
triumphs. Through Anne's infatuation for her, she was virtually ruler
while the friendship lasted. But to acquire ascendancy over Anne was
not much of an achievement.
It is said that there was but one duller person than the Queen in her
Kingdom, and that was the royal Consort, George, Prince of Denmark.
Happy was it for England that of the seventeen children born into this
royal household, not one survived. {135} The succession, in the
absence of direct heirs, was pledged to George, Elector of Hanover, a
remote descendant of James I.
It was during Anne's reign that English literature assumed a new
character. The stately and classic form being set aside for a style
more familiar, and which concerned itself with the affairs of everyday
life. Letters shone with a mild splendor, while Steele, Sterne, Swift,
Defoe and Fielding were writing, and Addison's "Spectator" was on every
breakfast-table.
In the year 1714 Anne died, and George I., of the House of Hanover, was
King of England,--an England which, thanks to the great soldier and
Duke, would never more be molested by the intriguing designs of a
French King, and which held in her hand Gibraltar, the key to the
Mediterranean.
King George I. was a German grandson of Elizabeth, sister of Charles I.
Deeply attached to his own Hanover, this stupid old man came slowly and
reluctantly to assume his new honors. He could not speak English; and
as he smoked his long pipe, his homesick soul was soothed by the ladies
{136} of his Court, who cut caricature figures out of paper for his
amusement, while Robert Walpole relieved him of affairs of State. As
ignorant of the politics of England as of its language, Walpole
selected the King's Ministers and determined the policy of his
Government; establishing a precedent which has always been followed.
Since that time it has been the duty of the Prime Minister to form the
Ministry; and no sovereign since Anne has ever appeared at a Cabinet
Council, nor has refused assent to a single Act of Parliament.
Such a King was merely a symbol of Protestantism and of Constitutional
Government. But this stream of royal dulness which set in from Hanover
in 1714, came as a great blessing at the time. It enabled England to
be ruled for thirty years by the party which had since the usurpation
of James I. stood for the rights of the people. Walpole created a Whig
Government. The Whigs had never wavered from certain principles upon
which they had risen to power. There must be no tampering with
justice, nor with the freedom of the press, {137} nor any attempt to
rule independently of Parliament. Thirty years of rule under these
principles converted them into an integral part of the national life.
The habit of loyalty to them was so established by this long ascendancy
of the Whig party, that Englishmen forgot that such things could
be;--forgot that it was possible to infringe upon the sacred liberties
of the people.
However much "Whig" and "Tory" have seemed to change since we first
hear of them in the time of James I., they have in fact remained
essentially the same; the Whigs always tending to limit the power of
the crown, and the Tories to limit that of the people. At the time of
Walpole the Tories had been the supporters of the Pretender and of the
High Church party, the Whigs of the policy of William and
Protestantism. Their predecessors were the "Roundheads" and
"Cavaliers," and their successors to-day are found in the "Liberals"
and "Conservatives."
There was at last peace abroad and prosperity at home. The latter was
interrupted for a time in 1720 by the speculative {138} madness created
by the "South-Sea Bubble." Men were almost crazed by the rise in the
value of shares from £100 to £1,000; and then plunged into despair and
ruin when they suddenly dropped to nothing. The suffering caused by
this wreck of fortunes was great. But industries revived, and
prosperity and wealth returned with little to disturb them again until
the death of George I. in 1727; when another George came over from
Hanover to occupy the English throne.
George II. had one advantage over his father. He did speak the English
language. Nor was he content to smoke his pipe and entrust his Kingdom
to his Ministers, which was a doubtful advantage for the nation. But
his clever wife, Queen Caroline, believed thoroughly in Walpole, and
when she was controlled by the Minister, and then in turn herself
controlled the policy of the King, that simple gentleman supposed that
he,--George II.,--was ruling his own Kingdom. His small, narrow mind
was incapable of statesmanship; but he was a good soldier. Methodical,
stubborn and passionate, {139} he was a King who needed to be carefully
watched, and adroitly managed, to keep him from doing harm.
There was a young "Pretender" in these days (Charles Edward Stuart),
who was conspiring with Louis XV., as his father had done with Louis
XIV., to get to the English throne. We see him flitting about Europe
from time to time, landing here and there on the British Coast--until
when finally defeated at "Culloden Moor," 1746, this wraith of the
House of Stuart disappears--dying obscurely in Rome; and "Wha'll be
King but Charlie," and "Over the Water to Charlie," linger only as the
echo of a lost cause.
There was a time of despondency when England seemed to be annexed to
Hanover, following her fortunes, and sharing her misfortunes in the
"seven years' war" over the Austrian succession, as if the Great
Kingdom were a mere dependency to the little Electorate; and all to
please the stubborn King. Desiring peace above all things England was
no sooner freed from one entanglement, than she was plunged into
another.
{140}
In India, the English "Merchant Company," chartered by Elizabeth in
1600, had expanded to a power. One of the native Princes, jealous of
these foreign intruders in Bengal, and roused, it was said, by the
French to expel them, committed that deed at which the world has
shuddered ever since. One hundred and fifty settlers and traders, were
thrust into an air-tight dungeon--in an Indian midsummer. Maddened
with heat and with thirst, most of them died before morning, trampling
upon each other in frantic efforts to get air and water. This is the
story of the "Black Hole of Calcutta;" which led to the victories of
Clive, and the establishment of English Empire in India, 1767.
Two years later a quarrel over the boundaries of their American
Colonies brought the French and English into direct conflict. Gen.
Wolfe, the English Commander, was killed at the moment of victory in
scaling the walls of Quebec. Montcalm, the French commander, being
saved the humiliation of seeing the loss of Canada (1760), by sharing
the same fate.
{141}
The dream of French Empire in America was at an end; and with the
cession of Florida by Spain, England was mistress of the eastern half
of the Continent from Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the
Atlantic to the Mississippi. So since the days of Elizabeth, and from
seed dropped by her hand, an Eastern and a Western Empire had been
added to that island Kingdom, whose highest dream had been to get back
some of her lost provinces in France. Instead of that it was to be her
destiny to girdle the Earth, so that the Sun in its entire course
should never cease to shine upon British Dominions.
Side by side with the aspiration which uplifts a nation, there is
always a tendency toward degradation, which can only be arrested by the
infusion of a higher spiritual life. Strong alcoholic liquors had
taken the place of beer in England (to avoid the excessive tax imposed
upon it) and the grossest intemperance prevailed in the early part of
this reign. John Wesley introduced a regenerative force when he went
about among the people preaching "Methodism," a pure {142} and simple
religion. Not since Augustine had the hearts of men been so touched,
and a new life and new spirit came into being, better than all the
prosperity and territorial expansion of the time.
Walpole had passed from view long before the stirring changes we have
alluded to. A new hand was guiding the affairs of State; the hand of
William Pitt.
{143}
CHAPTER XII
At the close of the Seven Years' War, England had driven the French out
of Canada,--her ships which had traversed the Pacific from one end to
the other, (Capt. Cook) had wherever they touched, claimed islands for
the Crown; she had projected into the heart of India English
institutions and civilization.
Mistress of North America, and of the Pacific Isles, and future
mistress of India, she had left in comparative insignificance those
European States whose power was bounded by a single Continent. And all
this,--in the reign of the puniest King who had ever sat upon her
throne! As if to show that England was great not through--but in spite
of, her Kings.
When in 1760, George III. came to the throne, thirteen prosperous
American Colonies were a source of handsome revenue to {144} the mother
country, by whom they were regarded as receptacles for surplus
population, and a good field for unsuccessful men and adventurers.
These children were frequently reminded that they owed England a great
debt of gratitude. They had cost her expensive Indian and French wars
for which she should expect them to reimburse her as their prosperity
grew. They were to make nothing themselves, not so much as a
horseshoe; but to send their raw material to English mills and
factories, and when it was returned to them in wares and manufactured
articles, they were to pay such taxes as were imposed, with grateful
hearts to the kind Government which was so good as to rule them.
If the Colonies had still needed the protection of England from the
French, they might never have questioned the propriety of their
treatment. They were at heart intensely loyal, and the thought of
severance from the Mother Country probably did not exist in a single
breast. But they had since the fall of Quebec a feeling of security
which was a good background for {145} independence, if their manhood
required its assertion. They were Anglo-Saxons, and perfectly
understood the long struggle for civil rights which lay behind them.
So when in 1765 they were told that they must bear their share of the
burden of National Debt which had been increased by wars in their
behalf, and to that end a "Stamp Act" had been passed, they very
carefully looked into the demand. This Act required that every legal
document drawn in the Colonies, will, deed, note, draft, receipt, etc.,
be written upon paper bearing an expensive Government stamp.
[Illustration: Nelson's Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, 1805. From
the painting by Stanfield in the National Gallery, London.]
The thirteen Colonies, utterly at variance upon most subjects, were
upon this agreed: _They would not submit to the tax_. They had read
the Magna Charta, they knew that the Stamp Act violated its most vital
principle. This tax had been framed to extort money from men who had
no representation in Parliament, hence without their consent.
Pitt vehemently declared that the Act was a tyranny, Burke and Fox
protested against it, the brain and the heart of England compelled the
repeal of the Act; Pitt {146} declaring that the spirit shown in
America was the same that in England had withstood the Stuarts, and
refused "Ship Money." There was rejoicing and ringing of bells over
the repeal, but before the echoes had died away another plan was
forming in the narrow recesses of the King's brain.
George III. had read English History. He remembered that if
Parliaments grow obstructive, the way is not to fight them but to pack
them with the right kind of material. Tampering with the boroughs, had
so filled the House of Commons with Tories that it had almost ceased to
be a representative body, and if Pitt would not bow to his wishes, he
would find a Minister who would. Another tax was devised.
Threepence a pound upon tea, shipped direct to America from India,
would save the impost to England, bring tea at a cheaper rate to the
Colonies (even with the added tax), and at the same time yield a
handsome revenue to the Government.
The Colonists were not at all moved by the idea of getting cheaper tea.
They had {147} taken their stand in this matter of taxation without
representation; they would never move from it one inch. When the cargo
of tea arrived in Boston harbor, it was thrown overboard by men
disguised as Indians.
George III. in a rage closed the port of Boston, cancelled the Charter
of Massachusetts, withdrew the right of electing its own council and
judges, investing the Governor with these rights, to whom he also gave
the power to send rebellious and seditious prisoners to England for
trial. Then to make all this sure of fulfilment, he sent troops to
enforce the order, in command of General Gage, whom he also appointed
Governor of Massachusetts.
Fox said, "How intolerable that it should be in the power of one
blockhead to do so much mischief!" The obstinacy of George III. cost
England her dearest and fairest possession. It is almost impossible to
picture what would be her power to-day if she had continued to be
mistress of North America!
All unconscious of his stupendous folly, the King was delighted at his
own firmness. {148} He rubbed his hands in high glee as he said,--"The
die is cast, the Colonies must submit or triumph," meaning of course
that "triumph" was a thing impossible. Pitt (now Earl Chatham), Burke,
Fox, even the Tory House of Lords, petitioned and implored in vain.
The confident, stubborn King stood alone, and upon him lies the whole
responsibility--Lord North simply acting as his compliant tool.
The colonies united as one, all local differences forgotten. As they
fought at Lexington and at Bunker Hill, the idea of something more than
_resistance_ was born--the idea of _independence_.
A letter from the Government addressed to the Commander-in-Chief as
"George Washington, Esq.," was sent back unopened. Battles were lost
and won, the courage and resources of the Americans holding out for
years as if by miracle, until when reinforced by France the end drew
near; and was reached with the defeat of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown.
It was a dreary morning in 1782 when a humiliated King stood before the
House of {149} Lords and acknowledged the independence of the United
States of America!
Thus ended a contest which the Earl of Chatham had said "was conceived
in injustice, and nurtured in folly."
It was during the American war that the Press rose to be a great
counterbalancing power. Popular sentiment no longer finding an outlet
in the House of Commons, sought another mode of expression. Public
opinion gathered in by the newspapers became a force before which
Government dared not stand. The "Chronicle," "Post," "Herald" and
"Times" came into existence, philosophers like Coleridge, and statesmen
like Canning using their columns and compelling reforms.
The impeachment of Warren Hastings, conducted by Burke, Sheridan, and
Fox, led to such an exposure of the cruelty and corruption of the East
India Company, that the gigantic monopoly was broken up. A "Board of
Control" was created for the administration of Indian affairs, thus
absorbing it into the general system of English Government (1784).
{150}
James Watt had introduced (in 1769) steam into the life of England,
with consequences dire at first, and fraught with such tremendous
results later, changing all the industrial conditions of England and of
the world.
In 1789 England witnessed that terrific outburst of human passions in
France, which culminated in the death of a King and a Queen. An
appalling sight which made Republicanism seem odious, even to so
exalted and just a soul as Burke, who denounced it with words of
thrilling eloquence. Then came Napoleon Bonaparte, and his swift
ascent to imperial power, followed by his audacious conquest almost of
Europe, until Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, led the allied
army at Waterloo, and Napoleon's sun went down.
In 1812 the United States for a second time declared war against
England. That country had claimed the right to search for British-born
seamen upon American ships, in order to impress them into her own
service and recruit her Navy. The "right of search" was denied, and
the British {151} forces landed in Maryland, burned the Capitol and
Congressional Library at Washington, but met their "Waterloo" at New
Orleans, where they were defeated by General Andrew Jackson, and the
"right of search" is heard of no more.
Long before this time George III. had been a prey to blindness,
deafness, and insanity, and in 1820 his death came as a welcome event.
Had he not been blind, deaf, and insane, in 1775, England might not
have lost her fairest possession.
The weight of the enormous debt incurred by the long wars fell most
heavily upon the poor. One-half of their earnings went to the Crown.
The poor man lived under a taxed roof, wore taxed clothing, ate taxed
food from taxed dishes, and looked at the light of day through taxed
window-glass. Nothing was free but the ocean.
[Illustration: The British Squares at Quattre-Bras, 1815. From the
painting by Elizabeth Southerden Thompson.]
But there must not be cheap bread, for that meant reduced rents. The
farmer was "protected" by having the price of corn kept artificially
above a certain point, and further "protected" by a prohibitory tax
upon foreign corn, all in order that the landlord {152} might collect
undiminished rentals from his farm lands. But, alas! there was no
"protection" from starvation. Is it strange that gaunt famine was a
frequent visitor in the land?--But men must starve in silence.--To beg
was a crime.
"Alas, that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap!"
Children six years old worked fourteen and fifteen hours daily in mines
and factories, beaten by overseers to keep them awake over their tasks;
while others five and six years old, driven by blows, crawled with
their brooms into narrow soot-clogged chimneys, and sometimes getting
wedged in narrow flues, were mercifully suffocated and translated to a
kinder world.
A ruinous craving was created for stimulants, which took the place of
insufficient food, and in these stunted, pallid, emaciated beings a
foundation was laid for an enfeebled and debased population, which
would sorely tax the wisdom of statesmanship in the future.
If such was the condition of the honest {153} working poor, what was
that of the criminal? It is difficult now to comprehend the ferocity
of laws which made _235 offenses--punishable with death_,--most of
which offenses we should now call misdemeanors. But perhaps death was
better than the prisons, which were the abode of vermin, disease and
filth unspeakable. Jailers asked for no pay, but depended upon the
money they could wring from the wretched beings in their charge for
food and small alleviations to their misery. In 1773 John Howard
commenced his work in the prisons, and the idea was first conceived
that the object of punishment should be not to degrade sin-sick
humanity, but to reform it.
Far above this deep dark undercurrent, there was a bright, shining
surface. Johnson had made his ponderous contribution to letters.
Frances Burney had surprised the world with "Evelina;" Horace Walpole,
(son of Sir Robert) was dropping witty epigrams from his pen; Sheridan,
Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth, in tones both
grave and gay, were making sweet music; while Scott, {154} Byron,
Shelley added strains rich and melodious.
As all this was passing, George Stephenson was pondering over a daring
project. Fulton had completed his invention in 1807, and in 1819 the
first steamship had crossed the Atlantic. If engines could be made to
plough through the water, why might they not also be made to walk the
earth? It was thought an audacious experiment when he put this
fire-devouring iron monster on wheels, to draw loaded cars. Not until
1830 was his plan realized, when his new locomotive--"The Rocket"--drew
the first railway train from Liverpool to Manchester, the Duke of
Wellington venturing his life on the trial trip.
In the year 1782 Ireland was permitted to have its own Parliament; but
owing to conditions which are explained in a later chapter, she was
deprived of this legislative independence, and in 1801, after a
prolonged struggle, was reunited to Great Britain, and thenceforth sent
her representatives to the British Parliament.
The laws against Roman Catholics which {155} had been enacted as
measures of self-defence from the Stuarts, now that there was no longer
a necessity for them had become an oppression, which bore with special
weight upon Catholic Ireland. By the oath of "Supremacy," and by the
declarations against transubstantiation, intercession of Saints, etc.,
etc., the Catholics were shut out from all share in a Government which
they were taxed to support. Such an obvious injustice should not have
needed a powerful pleader; but it found one in Daniel O'Connell, who by
constant agitation and fiery eloquence created such a public sentiment,
that the Ministry, headed by the Duke of Wellington, aided by Sir
Robert Peel in the House, carried through a measure in 1828 which
opened Parliament to Catholics, and also gave them free access to all
places of trust, Civil or Military,--excepting that of Regent,--Lord
Chancellor--and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
There is nothing to record of George IV. except the irregularities of
his private life, over which we need not linger. He was a dissolute
spendthrift. His illegal marriage {156} with Mrs. Fitzherbert, and his
legal marriage with Caroline of Brunswick from whom he quickly freed
himself, are the chief events in his history.
His charming young daughter, the Princess Charlotte, had died in 1817,
soon after her marriage with Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. She had
been adored as the future Queen, but upon the death of George IV. in
1830, the Crown passed to his sailor brother William.
William IV. was sixty-five when he came to the throne. He was not a
courtier in his manners, nor much of a fine gentleman in his tastes.
But his plain, rough sincerity was not unacceptable, and his immediate
espousal of the Reform Act, then pending, won him popularity at once.
The efficiency and integrity of the House of Commons had long been
impaired by an effete system of representation, which had been
unchanged for 500 years. Boroughs were represented which had long
disappeared from the face of the earth. One had for years been covered
by the sea! Another existed as a fragment of a wall in a {157}
gentleman's park, while towns like Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and
nineteen other large and prosperous places, had no representation
whatever. These "rotten boroughs" as they were called, were usually in
the hands of wealthy landowners; one great Peer literally carrying
eleven boroughs in his pocket, so that eleven members went to the House
of Commons at his dictation.--It would seem that a reform so obviously
needed should have been easy to accomplish. But the House of Lords
clung to the old system as if the life of the Kingdom depended upon it.
And when the measure was finally carried the good old Duke of
Wellington said sadly, "We must hope for the best; but the most
sanguine cannot believe we shall ever again be as prosperous."
By this Act 56 boroughs were disfranchised, and 43 new ones, with 30
county constituencies, were created.
It was in the contest over this Reform Bill that the Tories took the
name of "Conservatives" and their opponents "Liberals." Its passage
marks a most important transition in England. The workingman was {158}
by it enfranchised, and the House of Commons, which had hitherto
represented _property_, thenceforth represented _manhood_.
Nor were political reforms the only ones. Human pity awoke from its
lethargy. The penalties for wrongdoing became less brutal, the prisons
less terrible. No longer did gaping crowds watch shivering wretches
brought out of the jails every Monday morning, in batches of twenty and
thirty, to be hung for pilfering or something even less. Little
children were lifted out of the mines and factories and chimneys and
placed in schools, which also began to be created for the poor.
Numberless ways were devised for making life less miserable for the
unfortunate, and for improving the social conditions of toiling men and
women.
While white slavery in the collieries and factories was thus mitigated,
Wilberforce removed the stain of negro slavery from England in securing
the passage of a Bill which, while compensating the owners (who
received £20,000,000), set 800,000 human beings free (1833).
{159}
CHAPTER XIII
William IV. died at Windsor Castle, and at 5 o'clock on the morning of
June 20th, 1837 (just 58 years from the day this is written), a young
girl of eighteen was awakened to be told she was Queen of Great Britain
and Ireland. Victoria was the only child of Edward, Duke of Kent,
brother of William IV. Her marriage in 1840 with her cousin, Prince
Albert of Saxe-Coburg, was one of deep affection, and secured for her a
wise and prudent counsellor.
On account of the high price of corn, Ireland had for years subsisted
entirely upon potatoes. The failure of this crop for several
successive seasons, in 1846 produced a famine of such appalling
dimensions that the old and the new world came to the rescue of the
starving people. Parliament voted £10,000,000 for food. But before
{160} relief could reach them, two millions, one-fourth of the
population of Ireland, had perished. The anti-corn measures,
championed by Richard Cobden and John Bright, which had been bitterly
opposed by the Tories under the leadership of Disraeli, were thus
reinforced by unexpected argument; foreign breadstuffs were permitted
free access and free trade was accepted as the policy of England.
Nicholas, the Czar of Russia, was, after the fashion of his
predecessors (and his successors), always waiting for the right moment
to sweep down upon Constantinople. England had become only a land of
shopkeepers, France was absorbed with her new Empire, and with trying
on her fresh imperial trappings. The time seemed favorable for a move.
The pious soul of Nicholas was suddenly stirred by certain restrictions
laid by the Sultan upon the Christians in Palestine. He demanded that
he be made the Protector of Christianity in the Turkish Empire, by an
arrangement which would in fact transfer the Sovereignty from
Constantinople to St. Petersburg.
{161}
That mass of Oriental corruption known as the Ottoman Empire, held
together by no vital forces, was ready to fall into ruin at one
vigorous touch. It was an anachronism in modern Europe, where its
cruelty was only limited by its weakness. That such an odious,
treacherous despotism should so strongly appeal to the sympathies of
England that she was willing to enter upon a life-and-death struggle
for its maintenance, let those believe who can.--Her rushing to the
defence of Turkey, was about as sincere as Russia's interest in the
Christians in Palestine.
The simple truth beneath all these diplomatic subterfuges was of course
that Russia wanted Constantinople, and England would at any cost
prevent her getting it. The keys to the East must, in any event, not
belong to Russia, her only rival in Asia.
France had no Eastern Empire to protect, so her participation in the
struggle is at first not so easy to comprehend, until we reflect that
she had an ambitious and _parvenu_ Emperor. To have Europe see him in
confidential alliance with England, was alone {162} worth a war; while
a vigorous foreign policy would help to divert attention from the
recent treacheries by which he had reached a throne.
Such were some of the hidden springs of action which in 1854 brought
about the Crimean War,--one of the most deadly and destructive of
modern times. Two great Christian kingdoms had rushed to the defence
of the worst Government ever known, and the best blood in England was
being poured into Turkish soil.
It was soon discovered that the English were no less skilled as
fighters, than as "shop-keepers." They were victorious from the very
first, even when the numbers were ill-matched. But one immortal deed
of valor must have made Russia tremble before the spirit it revealed.
Six hundred cavalrymen, in obedience to an order which all knew was a
blunder, dashed into a valley lined with cannon, and charged an army of
30,000 men!
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
{163}
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do, and die;
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
The horrible blunder at Balaklava was not the only one. One incapable
general was followed by another, and routine and red-tape were more
deadly than Russian shot and shell.
Food and supplies beyond their utmost power of consumption, were
hurried to the army by grateful England. Thousands of tons of wood for
huts, shiploads of clothing and profuse provision for health and
comfort, reached Balaklava.
While the tall masts of the ships bearing these treasures were visible
from the heights of Sebastopol, men there were perishing for lack of
food, fuel and clothing. In rags, almost barefoot, half-fed, often
without fuel even to cook their food, in that terrible winter on the
heights, whole regiments of heroes became extinct, because there was
not sufficient administrative ability to convey the supplies to a
perishing army!
So wretched was the hospital service, that {164} to be sent there meant
death. Gangrene carried off four out of five. Men were dying at a
rate which would have extinguished the entire army in a year and a
half. It was Florence Nightingale who redeemed this national disgrace,
and brought order, care and healing into the camps.
When England recalls with pride the valor and the victories in the
Crimea, let her remember it was the _manhood in the ranks_ which
achieved it. When all was over, war had slain its thousands,--but
official incapacity its tens of thousands!
It was a costly victory: Russia was humiliated, was even shut out from
the waters of her own Black Sea, where she had hitherto been supreme.
To two million Turks was preserved the privilege of oppressing eight
million Christians; and for this,--twenty thousand British youth had
perished. But--the way to India was unobstructed!
England's career of conquest in India was not altogether of her own
seeking. As a neighboring province committed outrages upon its British
neighbors, it became necessary in self-defence to punish it; and such
{165} punishment, invariably led to its subjugation. In this way one
province after another was subdued, until finally in the absorption of
the Kingdom of Oude (1856) the natural boundary of the Himalaya
Mountains had been reached, and the conquest was complete. The little
trading company of British merchants had become an Empire, vast and
rich beyond the wildest dreams of romance.
The British rule was upon the whole beneficent. The condition of the
people was improved, and there was little dissatisfaction except among
the deposed native princes, who were naturally filled with hate and
bitterness. The large army required to hold such an amount of
territory, was to a great extent recruited from the native population,
the Sepoys, as they were called, making good soldiers.
In 1857 the King of the Oude and some of the native princes cunningly
devised a plan of undermining the British by means of their Sepoys, and
circumstances afforded a singular opportunity for carrying out their
design.
{166}
A new rifle had been adopted, which required a greased cartridge, for
which animal grease was used. The Sepoys were told this was a
deep-laid plot to overthrow their native religions. The Mussulman was
to be eternally lost by defiling his lips with the fat of swine, and
the Hindu, by the indignity offered to the venerated Cow. These
English had tried to ruin them not alone in this world, but in the next.
Thrilled with horror, terror-stricken, the dusky soldiers were
converted into demons. Mutinies arose simultaneously at twenty-two
stations; not only officers, but Europeans, were slaughtered without
mercy. At Cawnpore was the crowning horror. After a siege of many
days the garrison capitulated to Nana Sahib and his Sepoys. The
officers were shot, and their wives, daughters, sisters and babes, 206
in number, were shut up in a large apartment which had been used by the
ladies for a ballroom.
After eighteen days of captivity, the horrors of which will never be
known, five men with sabres, in the twilight, were seen to enter the
room and close the door. There {167} were wild cries and shrieks and
groans. Three times a hacked and a blunted sabre was passed out of a
window in exchange for a sharper one. Finally the groans and moans
gradually ceased and all was still. The next morning a mass of
mutilated remains was thrown into an empty well.
Two days later the avenger came in the person of General Havelock. The
Sepoys were conquered and a policy of merciless retribution followed.
In that well at Cawnpore was forever buried sympathy for the mutinous
Indian. When we recall that, we can even hear with calmness of Sepoys
fired from the cannon's mouth. From that moment it was the cause of
men in conflict with demons, civilization in deadly struggle with
cruel, treacherous barbarism. We cannot advocate meeting atrocity with
atrocity, nor can we forget that it was a Christian nation fighting
with one debased and infidel. But terrible surgery is sometimes needed
to extirpate disease.
Greed for territory, and wrong, and injustice may have mingled with the
{168} acquisition of an Indian Empire, but posterity will see only a
majestic uplifting of almost a quarter of the human family from debased
barbarism, to a Christian civilization; and all through the
instrumentality of a little band of trading settlers from a small
far-off island in the northwest of Europe.
But there were other things besides famine and wars taking place in the
Kingdom of the young Queen. A greater and a subtler force than steam
had entered into the life of the people. A miracle had happened in
1858, when an electric wire threaded its way under the Atlantic, and
two continents conversed as friends sitting hand in hand.
Another miracle had then just been achieved in the discovery of certain
chemical conditions, by which scenes and objects would imprint
themselves in minutest detail upon a prepared surface. A sort of magic
seemed to have entered into life, quickening and intensifying all its
processes. Enlarged knowledge opened up new theories of disease and
created a new Art of healing. Surgery, with its unspeakable anguish,
was {169} rendered painless by anæsthetics. Mechanical invention was
so stimulated that all the processes of labor were quickened and
improved.
In 1851 the Prince Consort conceived the idea of a great Exposition,
which should under one roof gather all the fruits of this marvellous
advance, and Sydenham Palace, a gigantic structure of glass and iron,
was erected.
In literature, Tennyson was preserving English valor in immortal verse.
Thackeray and Dickens, in prose as immortal, were picturing the social
lights and shadows of the Victorian Age.
In 1861 a crushing blow fell upon the Queen in the death of the Prince
Consort. America treasures kindly memory of Prince Albert, on account
of his outspoken friendship in the hour of her need. During the war of
the Rebellion, while the fate of our country seemed hanging in the
balance, we had few friends in England, where people seemed to look
with satisfaction upon our probable dismemberment.
{170}
We are not likely to forget the three shining exceptions:--Prince
Albert--John Bright--and John Stuart Mill.
It was while that astute diplomatist, Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) was
Prime Minister, that French money, skill and labor opened up the
waterway between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. It would never do
to have France command such a strategic point on the way to the East.
England was alert. She lost not a moment. The impecunious Khedive was
offered by telegraph $20,000,000 for his interest in the Suez Canal,
nearly one-half of the whole capital stock. The offer was accepted
with no less alacrity than it was made. So with the Arabian Port of
Aden, which she already possessed, and with a strong enough financial
grasp upon impoverished Egypt to secure the right of way, should she
need it, England had made the Canal which France had dug, practically
her own.
[Illustration: The British in India: A native prince receiving the
decoration of the order of the Star of India from Albert Edward, the
Prince of Wales. From the painting by Sydney Hall, P.M.A.]
Lord Beaconsfield had crowned his dramatic and picturesque Ministerial
career by placing a new diadem on the head of the {171} widowed Queen,
who was now Empress of India. His successor, William Ewart Gladstone,
the great leader of the Liberal party, was content with a less showy
field. He had in 1869 relieved Ireland from the unjust burden of
supporting a Church the tenets of which she considered blasphemous; and
one which her own, the Roman Catholic, had for three centuries been
trying to overthrow. We cannot wonder that the memory of a tyranny so
odious is not easily effaced; nor that there is less gratitude for its
removal, than bitterness that it should so long have been. It is
certainly true that the disestablishment of the English Church in
Ireland was one of the most righteous acts of this reign.
The Irish question is such a tangled web of wrong and injustice
complicated by folly and outrage, that the wisest and best-intentioned
statesmanship is baffled. Whether the conditions would be improved by
giving them their own Parliament, could only be determined by
experiment; and that experiment England is not yet willing to try.
{172}
CHAPTER XIV
A fitting companion to the Story of England's Empire in India, is that
of her South African Colonial Possessions.
It was about the year 1652, while Oliver Cromwell's star was highest in
the heavens, that the Dutch East India Company, needing a resting place
on the way to the East, planted the germ of an Empire at the Cape of
Good Hope. The Portuguese, those pioneers in exploration had only
lightly touched this uninviting spot, and then were away chasing rumors
of gold.
But the Hollanders were men of a different sort. They asked no
indulgences from Nature; and when their roots had once grappled the
soil, however disheartening the conditions, they were not to be lured
away by glistening surfaces farther on. All they asked was a place on
which to {173} grow. And so with stolid persistence they worked away
in a field the least promising ever offered to human endeavor.
But the fates befriended them, and after the Revocation of the "Edict
of Nantes," a touch of grace and charm was brought into their sterile
life by the arrival of three hundred Huguenot refugees. And there, in
that austere land, for more than a century these children from Holland
and France patiently toiled, and with mild content watched their
grazing cattle as they gradually spread over a huge expanse of
territory; their only reward the feeling that this barren resting place
on the way to India was all their own, and that they had a sense of
independence which answered the deepest craving in their hearts; they
were safe, forever safe from the Old-World tyrannies.
But there was another nation which also needed a resting place on the
way to India. Great Britain, following closely in the footsteps of
Holland, now had a Greater East India Company, and a larger empire
{174} growing in the East. And clouds began to gather over the Dutch
Colonists, as they saw their solitude invaded by Old-World currents.
Perhaps the irritation from this made them quarrelsome; for temper and
temperament have been two most important factors in the story of the
Dutch in South Africa. At all events, there were various outbreaks and
insurrections, becoming at last so serious that the English Government
felt impelled to aid in their suppression. And this they did so
effectually that after a battle with the local forces in 1806, they
were virtual rulers of Cape Colony, which, in 1814, upon the payment of
six million pounds to the Stadtholder, was formally ceded to Great
Britain.
So, by right of conquest, and by right of purchase, England had come
into possession (although at the time unaware of it) of the greatest
diamond mines, and the richest gold mines in the world. And it had
turned out that the Dutch Colonists for a century and a half had been
subduing man and nature simply to enrich the {175} English; and in
return they were expected to live contentedly and peaceably in the land
they had made habitable for human occupation!
Thus two contrasting people had been carelessly and hastily tossed
together. The most conservative and the most progressive of
nationalities were expected to fuse their uncompromising traits into a
harmonious whole. The result should have been easy to foresee. The
Dutch, coerced into this union, with embittered hearts and deep sense
of injury, after twenty unhappy, stormy years, determined to escape.
They would cross the Orange River into the wilderness and there build
up another State, which should be forever their own. And so, in the
year 1835, there occurred what is known as "The Great Trek," when about
thirty thousand men and women, like swarming bees, migrated in a body
into the region north of the Orange River, later spreading east as far
as the coast in what is now "Natal," the whole region then bearing the
significant title: "The Orange Free State."
{176}
In the terms of the purchase, in 1814, not a word had been said about
this _Hinterland_, the vast region stretching indefinitely towards the
north; and here was the germ of all the trouble that was to come.
Through an oversight there existed a serious flaw in the British title,
which would severely tax statesmanship, diplomacy, and perhaps strain
national morality to the breaking point. Had this people the right, or
had they not the right to plant a State bearing a foreign flag, which
should effectually bar the path to the north? Should the English
Government allow a people fiercely antagonistic to itself to build up
an unfriendly State on its border? Such were the questions which arose
then, and which have been variously answered since, depending upon the
point of view.
If the question had been what _would_ happen, there would have been
greater unanimity in the replies! And, it must be acknowledged,
however uncertain the claim to this disputed region, that the interests
of civilization were more to be subserved by {177} British than by
Dutch Sovereignty in South Africa.
The policies of these two people were absolutely opposed; and it was
upon the question of the emancipation of the slaves, at the time of the
Emancipation Act, in 1835, that the final rupture and secession took
place. These slaves constituted a large part of the property of the
Boers; and great was their indignation when they were compelled to
accept from the British Government a compensation for their property so
far below their own appraisal of its value that it seemed to them a
confiscation.
Then it was that they resolved to break away from their oppressors, and
go where they could make their own laws, and follow their own ideals of
right and wrong. And so they turned their backs upon the scene of
their long toil.
In this strange exodus not the least important person, though
unobserved then, was a sturdy little fellow ten years old,
energetically doing his part in rounding up the cattle and flocks as he
trudged along beside the {178} huge oxcarts. His name was Paul
Stephanus Kruger. And this little man also took his first lesson in
military exploits when one hundred and thirty-five Boer farmers, by
ingenious use of horses and rifles, put to flight twelve thousand
Metabeli spearsmen. But again the Boer was only clearing the way for
British occupation, which, commencing at Natal in 1842, had, by 1848,
extended over the entire Orange Free State. And then there was another
trek. Again the Boers migrated, this time crossing the River Vaal, and
founding a "Transvaal Republic."
In the history of the next thirty years we see not a vacillating, but
rather a tentative policy, behind which was always an inflexible
purpose to establish British rule in South Africa, peaceably, if
possible, or by force, if compelled. The British Government was trying
to bring to terms the most intractable race it had ever dealt with in
all its colonizing experience. The thing which embarrassed the English
was that flaw in their claim; and the trouble with {179} the Boers was
that they were archaic in their ideals, and obstructive to all policies
which belonged to a modern civilization. They had stopped growing when
they left Holland. The emancipation and the philanthropies forced upon
them by a people who were stealing their land, exasperated them, and
outraged their sense of justice; and when the English punished them for
cruelties to the native savages, by executing four Boers, vitriol was
poured upon an open wound, and peace was forever impossible.
In 1852 England, in placating mood, yielded the local control of the
Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic. But in less than five
years the Boers had thrown away their opportunity by strife and discord
among themselves, and had separated into four small hostile Republics,
which Paul Stephanus Kruger, then President of the Transvaal, was
vainly striving to bring together. The only time they were not at war
with each other was when they were all fighting the natives, with whom
they never established friendly relations. Perhaps it {180} is asking
too much of a people so many times emptied from one region into
another, to have established internal conditions, economic and
political, such as belong to ordinary civilized states. But the
condition of disorder had become such that the British Government
believed, or at least claimed to believe, that as a measure of safety
to their own Colonies, the Transvaal should be annexed to the Colony at
the Cape.
The people were cautiously approached upon this subject, and even some
of the leaders among the burghers advocated the measure as the best,
and, indeed, only thing possible in the present state of demoralization.
So, in 1877, the annexation was effected. The Transvaal Republic was
taken under the sovereignty of Queen Victoria.
By a treaty drawn up in 1881, it was declared to be a self-governing,
although not an independent State. In all its foreign relations it was
subject to the Suzerainty of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. In other
words, it was a vassal State.
{181}
In that one word Suzerain there lurked the germ of a great war. In a
revision of the terms of agreement made by the British, in 1884, this
word, which was to play such an important part was omitted; whether by
accident or design cannot be said. But the Executive Council of the
Republic saw their opportunity, and claimed that the omission of the
word was virtually a relinquishment of the claim, and an admission that
the South African Republic was an independent and sovereign State.
Lord Derby, Minister of Foreign Affairs, replied that no such
significance could be attached to the omission in the amended treaty;
that the word Suzerain was not employed simply because it was vague and
indefinite in its meaning; whereas, the rights claimed by the British
were not vague, but precise and definite. These distinctly forbade the
South African Republic from concluding any treaty with a foreign power.
And as such power _was_ vested in the Queen, as a matter of course it
followed that the South African {182} Republic was _not a sovereign and
independent State_.
While this diplomatic controversy was proceeding, other and less formal
agencies were at work. The Transvaal, rich in resources beyond all
expectation, was being developed by British capital, without which
nothing could have been done. The _Uitlanders_, (or "Outlanders"), as
these English-born men were called, complained that, instead of
coöperating with them in this labor, which must result in the common
good, everything possible was done to embarrass and paralyze their
efforts. Chief among the long list of grievances was the claim that,
while they were the principal taxpayers, they were denied
representation, and that as they furnished the capital for all the
financial enterprises, it was but fair that they should have the
franchise which was stubbornly withheld from them.
Out of these conditions came the "Jameson Raid," the most discreditable
incident in the whole South African story; an incident which cast a
cloud of suspicion over {183} the entire British attitude, and enlisted
wide-spread sympathy for the Boers. Under the leadership of Dr.
Jameson, a gentleman closely associated with Cecil Rhodes in the South
African Chartered Company, an attempt was made to overthrow the Kruger
Government, and, to obtain by force the redress denied by peaceable
means.
When a revolt rises to the plane of a revolution it becomes
respectable. The "Jameson Raid" never reached that elevation. In less
than four days the entire force had surrendered and the leaders were
under arrest. The attempt upon Johannesburg, and the acts of violence
attending it, were denounced in unmeasured terms by the British
Government. Dr. Jameson and his chief abettors were tried in England,
and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment; four other prominent
leaders--one of them an American--had sentence of death passed upon
them by a judge from the Orange Free State, which was finally remitted
upon the payment of a large sum to the South African Republic. England
{184} did her best to rehabilitate her name in the estimation of the
world; and when the deplorable affair was over, it had done immense
injury to the English cause, and benefited not a little that of the
Republic.
Diplomatic negotiations were then resumed; Sir Alfred Milner presenting
the British view, urged the propriety of granting to foreign-born
residents the franchise; also the abolishment of certain monopolies
which pressed heavily upon the miners, and last, but not least, that
the sovereignty of Great Britain over the Transvaal, receive official
recognition.
This latter President Kruger flatly rejected, upon the ground that the
question of sovereignty had already been disposed of in 1884, when
Great Britain virtually abandoned the claim by omitting the word
_Suzerain_, or any reference to what it implied, from the amended
agreement; offering at the same time to submit the other demands to
arbitration.
On October 9, 1899, while Mr. Chamberlain was preparing new proposals,
an {185} ultimatum was received from President Kruger, demanding an
affirmative answer within forty-eight hours; failing in which, it would
be considered a virtual declaration of war. Sir Alfred Milner replied:
"You will inform your Government that the conditions demanded are such
as Her Majesty's Government deem it impossible to discuss."
On the afternoon of October 11th, the war had commenced, with General
Buller in command of the British forces, and General Joubert, aided by
General Cronje, commanding the Boers.
Before November 2d three serious engagements had taken place, and the
English had been compelled to fall back upon their base of supplies at
Ladysmith, where, after an ineffectual sortie on October 30th, they
were surrounded and their communications cut off.
The campaign continued to be a story of humiliating defeats until
December, when Lord Roberts assumed supreme command, with Lord
Kitchener as his chief of staff. {186} England thoroughly aroused was
sending men and supplies in unstinted measure for the great emergency,
and the world looked on in amazement as 200,000 British soldiers under
the greatest British commanders were kept at bay for something less
than three years by 30,000 untrained Boers. The British Government had
forgotten that these South African colonists were the children of a
French Huguenot ancestry which had defied Louis XIV., and of the men
who cut the dykes when the Netherlands were invaded by that same
tyrant. Some one had wittily said that no member of the Cabinet should
be allowed to cast his vote for the war, until he had read Motley's
"Rise of the Dutch Republic." And, indeed, it appeared to many that
the view of the Government was focussed upon one single point, the
establishing of British authority at any cost in South Africa. At the
same time many eminent Englishmen believed it was not to be expected
that a community so long established in a home of its own {187}
choosing, should upon demand be ready to bestow upon foreigners all the
rights of citizenship; and many also believed that the grievances of
the "Outlanders" were not greater than ordinarily existed when a mass
of foreign immigrants were pressing in upon a people who suspected and
disliked them. The sympathy of foreign states was strongly with the
Boers; and in England itself the cause evoked a languid enthusiasm,
until aroused by disaster, and until the pride of the nation was
touched by loss of prestige. The danger, the enormous difficulties to
be overcome, the privations and suffering of their boys, these were the
things which awoke the dormant enthusiasm in the heart of the nation.
And when the only son of Lord Roberts had been offered as a sacrifice,
and then a son of Lord Dufferin, and then, Prince Victor, October 29,
1900, grandson of the Queen herself, the cause had become sacred, and
one for which any loyal Briton would be willing to die.
By September 1, 1900, the Orange Free {188} State and the Transvaal had
been formally proclaimed by Lord Roberts, "Colonies of the British
Empire."
This was the beginning of the end, and when the victorious commander
(December 2, 1900) arrived in England amid the plaudits of a grateful
nation, the victory was practically won, and the time was at hand when
not far from twenty thousand British soldiers would be lying under the
sod six thousand miles away, in a land, which no longer disputed the
sovereignty of England!
We have yet to see whether the South African colonial possessions have
been paid for too dearly, with nine fierce Kaffir wars (another
threatening as this is written), and the blood of princes, peers, and
commoners poured as if it were water into the African soil. Is England
richer or poorer for this outpouring of blood and treasure? Has she
risen or fallen in the estimation of the world, as she uncovers her
stores of gold and diamonds among those valiant but defeated Boers,
sullenly {189} brooding over the past, with no love in their hearts.
Not the least pitiful incident in the whole story was the voluntary
exile of the man who had been the brain and soul of the South African
Republics. Indeed, the life of Paul Kruger, from the day when he
trudged beside the bullocks at the time of the great northward trek,
until he died a disappointed, embittered old man, a fugitive and an
exile, seems an epitome of the cause to which his life was devoted.
No story of this war, however brief, can omit the name of De Wet, the
most distinguished of the Boer generals, and perhaps the one genius,
certainly the most romantic figure in the whole drama. It was De Wet's
faculty for disappearing and reappearing at unexpected place and moment
which prolonged the war even after the end was inevitable, thus
justifying the title "Three Years' War," which he gave to a subsequent
history of the conflict.
The dedication to this book bears pathetic testimony to the character
of the {190} man: "_This work is dedicated to my fellow-subjects of the
British Empire_." When one reflects what these words meant for De Wet,
one is inclined to believe that his highest heroism was not attained on
the battle field!
{191}
CHAPTER XV
In less than three weeks after the return of Lord Roberts, and the
agitating interview for which she had been impatiently waiting,
England's beloved Queen succumbed to a brief illness, and died January
22, 1901.
Her son Albert Edward was immediately proclaimed King of Great Britain
and Ireland.
The change of Sovereigns has not materially altered the course of
events in the Empire. The King, with much dignity and seriousness,
assumed the responsibilities of his great inheritance, and England
seems to be in safekeeping. The terms finally agreed upon at the Peace
Conference, in May, 1902, bear the signature of Edward _Rex_, instead
of Victoria _Regina_--a {192} signature that peace-loving Sovereign
would so gladly have affixed.
In the year 1904 a British military force entered the hitherto sacred
domain of Tibet with the avowed purpose of obtaining redress from
Tibetan authorities for having violated a commercial agreement made
between China and British India in 1893; which convention was binding
upon Tibet as a vassal State to China. In addition to this, a letter
from the Viceroy of India to the Grand Lama, had been returned
unopened, which, it was claimed, was an insult to the King he
represents.
The time selected for this hostile demonstration, when the
Russo-Japanese War fully engaged the attention of the nations chiefly
interested, was, to say the least, significant; and some were so unkind
as to insinuate that the recently discovered mineral wealth of this
lofty plateau--"this Roof of the World"--was, like that of the
Transvaal in South Africa, a factor in this sudden romantic adventure.
Nature has guarded well this home of {193} mystery; a vast plateau,
from 10,000 to 15,000 feet above the sea-level is held aloft upon the
giant shoulders of the Himalaya, surrounded by deep valleys filled in
with the detritus of an older world. This inaccessible spot is the
home of the Grand Lama, the earthly representative of Buddha, and
Lhassa is the Holy City where this sacred being resides, a city never
profaned by infidel feet until the morning of August 4, 1904, when it
fell, and was desecrated by the presence of red-coated soldiers, and
the blare of military bands, and still worse the plundering of
treasure-houses and monasteries.
It was a rude awakening from the slumber of centuries! The Western
mind can scarcely realize how seriously this has wounded the
sensibilities of millions of people throughout the East; and the
question arises whether England may not some day have to pay more
dearly than now appears for the concessions she has obtained.
The treaty in its early form throws light upon the results expected
when the {194} expedition was planned. It bound the Tibetan
authorities to establish British markets at certain designated points;
and stipulated that, without the consent of Great Britain, no Tibetan
territory could be leased to any foreign power. Of course many people
could see in this the ultimate purpose of a British occupation of
Tibet, and an open way to the Yangtse Valley!
But with the Russo-Japanese War over, and Russia free to exert her
control over China, a stand was taken by the Chinese Government which
has resulted in modifying the terms of the treaty, which has recently
been signed at Pekin, by which Great Britain affirms that she does not
seek for herself any privileges which are denied to any other state or
the subjects thereof.
Two very important measures have been under consideration during the
new reign; one of these seeming to have afforded a solution for the
Land-problem in Ireland, which has for so long been the nightmare of
British politics. Further details of this {195} will be found in the
"History of Ireland," separately treated in this volume.
The other measure deals with the question of Education, and is an
attempt to solve to the satisfaction of Nonconformists, Catholics,
Church-of-England people, and people of no church at all, whether there
shall be any religious instruction in the schools for which all are
taxed, and if so what shall be its nature and restrictions.
The tendency since 1870 has been steadily toward the method adopted by
the United States, _i.e._, a severance of the civil community from all
responsibility for religious teaching. And such is the tendency of the
Bill now before the House of Lords. But it is believed that that
conservative body will hesitate long before giving up such a cherished
and time-encrusted principle as is involved.
So many Parliamentary reforms have been accomplished since the time
they commenced in 1832, the time seems not far distant when there will
be little more for Liberals to urge, or for Conservatives and the {196}
House of Lords to obstruct. Monarchy is absolutely shorn of its
dangers. The House of Commons, which is the actual ruling power of the
Kingdom, is only the expression of the popular will.
We are accustomed to regard American freedom as the one supreme type.
But it is not. The popular will in England reaches the springs of
Government more freely, more swiftly, and more imperiously, than it
does in Republican America. It comes as a stern mandate, which must be
obeyed on the instant. The King of England has less power than the
President of the United States. The President can form a definite
policy, select his own Ministry to carry it out, and to some extent
have his own way for four years, whether the people like it or not.
The King cannot do this for a day. His Ministry cannot stand an hour,
with a policy disapproved by the Commons. Not since Anne has a
sovereign refused signature to an Act of Parliament. The Georges, and
William IV., continued to exercise the power of dismissing Ministers at
their {197} pleasure. But since Victoria, an unwritten law forbids it,
and with this vanishes the last _remnant of a personal Government_.
The end long sought is attained.
The history of no other people affords such an illustration of a
steadily progressive national development from seed to blossom,
compelled by one persistent force. Freedom in England has not been
wrought by cataclysm as in France, but has unfolded like a plant from a
life within; impeded and arrested sometimes, but patiently biding its
time, and then steadily and irresistibly pressing outward; one leaf
after another freeing itself from the detaining force. Only a few more
remain to be unclosed, and we shall behold the consummate flower of
fourteen centuries;--centuries in which the most practical nation in
the world has steadily pursued an _ideal_--the ideal of individual
freedom subordinated only to the good of the whole!
{199}
A SHORT HISTORY OF IRELAND.
The history of prehistoric Ireland as told in ancient chronicles,
easily proves the Irish to be the oldest nation in Europe, mingling
their story with those not alone of Egypt, Troy, Greece, and Rome, but
with that of Noah and the antediluvian world. Who was the Lady Cæsair,
who fled with her household to Ireland from the coming deluge after
being refused shelter by Noah? and who Nemehd, the next colonist from
the East, who heads the royal procession of one hundred and eighteen
kings? and who, above all, is Milesius, who comes fresh from the
lingual disaster at Shinar, the divinely appointed ruler, bringing with
him his Egyptian wife Scota (Pharaoh's daughter) and her son Gael? and
who that other son Heber, whose name was given to the original _lingua
humana_ (the Hebrew), in honor of his efforts to prevent the
blasphemous building of {200} Babel? For what do these shadowy figures
stand, looming out of formless mist and chaos, and bestowing their
names as imperishable memorials?--Scotia, Scots, Gaelic,--the word
Gaelic in its true significance including Ireland and Scotland. Even
the name Fenian takes on a venerable dignity when we learn that Fenius,
the Scythian King, and father of Milesius, established the first
university--a sort of school of languages--for the study of the
seventy-two new varieties of human speech, appointing seventy-two wise
men to master this new and troublesome branch of human knowledge! We
are told that Heber and Heremon, the sons of Milesius, finally divided
the island between them, and then, after the fashion of Romulus, Heber
drove the factious Heremon over the sea into the land of the Picts, and
reigned alone over the Scots in Ireland.
The sober truth seems to be that Ireland, at a very early period, was
known to the Greeks as Ierne (from which comes Erin), and later to the
Romans as Hibernia. At a very remote time it seems to have been
colonized by Greek and other Eastern peoples, who left a deep impress
upon the Celtic race {201} already inhabiting the island; but an
impress upon the mind, not the life, of the Celts, for no vestige of
Greek or other civilization, except in language and in ideals, has ever
been found in Ireland. The only archæological remains are cromlechs,
which tell of a Druidical worship, and the round towers, belonging to a
much later period, whose purpose is only conjectured.
Ireland's Aryan parentage is plainly indicated in its primitive social
organization and system of laws. The family was the social unit, and
the clan or _sept_ was only a larger family. Pre-Christian Ireland was
divided into five septs: Munster, Connaught, Ulster, Leinster, and
Meath. Each of these tribal divisions was governed by a chief or king,
who was the head of the clan (or family). Among these, the chief-king,
or _Ard Reagh_, resided at Tara in Meath, and received allegiance from
the other four, with no jurisdiction, however, over the internal
affairs of the other kingdoms. There was a perpetual strife between
the clans. Outside of one's own tribal limits was the enemy's country.
The business of life was marauding and plundering, and the greatest
hero {202} was he who could accomplish these things by deeds of the
greatest daring.
All alike lived under a simple code of laws administered by a
hereditary class of jurists called Brehons. All offences were
punishable by a system of fines called erics. The land was owned by
the clan. Primogeniture was unknown, and the succession to the office
of chief was determined by the clan, which had power to select any one
within the family lines as Tanist or successor. This in "Brehon Law"
is known as the "law of Tanistry," and was closely interwoven with the
later history of Ireland. But the class more exalted than kings or
brehons was the Bards. These were inspired singers, before whom
Brehons quailed and kings meekly bowed their heads.
During the Roman occupation of Britain in which that country was
Christianized, pagan Ireland heard nothing of the new evangel almost at
her door. But in 432, after Britain had relapsed into paganism, St.
Patrick came into the darkened isle. If ever Pentecostal fires
descended upon a nation it was in those sixty years during which one
saintly man transformed a people from {203} brutish paganism to
Christianity, and converted Ireland into the torch-bearer and nourisher
of intellectual and spiritual life, so that as the gothic night was
settling upon Europe, the centre of illumination seemed to be passing
from Rome to Ireland. Their missionaries were in Britain, Germany,
Gaul; and students from Charlemagne's dominions, and the sons of kings
from other lands, flocked to those stone monasteries, the remains of
which are still to be seen upon the Irish coast, and which were then
the acknowledged centres of learning in Europe. It was not until late
in the ninth century that Ireland played a truly great part in European
history. Rome became jealous of these fiery Christians; they had never
worn her yoke, and concerned themselves little about the Pope. They
had their own views about the shape of the tonsure, and also their own
time for celebrating Easter, which was heretical and contumacious, and
there began a struggle between Roman and Western Christianity. The
passion for art and letters which accompanied this spiritual birth
makes this, indeed, a Golden Age. But the painting of missals, and
study of Greek poetry and philosophy, {204} brought no change in the
life of the people. It was for the learned, and a subject for just
pride in retrospect. But the Christianized septs fought each other as
before, and life was no less wild and disordered than it had always
been.
In the eighth century the first viking appeared. It was then that a
master-spirit arose, a man of the clan of O'Brien--_Brian Boru_. He
drove out the Danes, usurped the place of Chief-King, and reigned in
the Halls of Tara for a few years, then left his land to lapse once
more into a chaos of fighting clans. But it was Dermot, the King of
Leinster, whose fatal quarrel led to the subjugation of the land to
England. The Irish epic, like that of Troy, has its Paris and Helen.
If that fierce old man had not fallen in love with the wife of the Lord
of Brefny and carried her away, there might have been a different story
to tell. The injured husband made war upon him, in which the
Chief-King took part, and so hot was it made for the wife-stealer, that
he offered to place Leinster at the feet of Henry II. in return for
assistance. A party of adventurous barons, led by Strongbow, the Earl
of Pembroke, {205} rushed to Dermot's rescue, defeated the Chief-King,
drove the Danes out of Dublin, which they had founded, and took
possession of that city themselves. Henry II. followed up the
unauthorized raid of his barons with a well-equipped army, which he
himself led, landing upon the Irish coast in 1171.
The conquest was soon complete, and Henry proceeded to organize his new
territory, dividing it into counties, and setting up law-courts at
Dublin, which was chosen as the Seat of his Lord-Deputy. The system of
English law was established for the use of the Norman barons and
English settlers, the natives being allowed to live under their old
system of Brehon laws. Henry gave huge grants of land with feudal
rights to his barons, then returned to his own troubled kingdom,
leaving them to establish their claims and settle accounts with the
Irish chieftains as best they could. The sword was the argument used
on both sides, and a conflict between the brehon and feudal systems had
commenced which still continues in Ireland. If Henry had expected to
convert Irishmen into Englishmen, he had {206} miscalculated; it was
the reverse which happened--the Norman-English were slowly but surely
converted into Irishmen, and two elements were thereafter side by side,
the Old Irish and the Anglo-Irish, who, however antagonistic, had
always a certain community of interest which drew them together in
great emergencies.
It is an easy task to describe a storm which has one centre. But how
is one to describe the confused play of forces in a cyclone which has
centres within centres? Irish chieftains at war with Irish chieftains,
jealous Norman barons with Norman barons, all at the same time in
deadly struggle with O'Neills, O'Connells, and O'Briens, who would
never cease to fight for the territory which had been torn from them;
and yet each and all of these ready in a desperate crisis to combine
for the preservation of Ireland. In this chaos the territorial barons
were the framework of the structure. The grants bestowed by Henry II.
had created, in fact, a group of small principalities. These were
called Palatinates, and the power of the Lords Palatine was almost
without limit. Each was a king in his own little {207} kingdom--could
make war upon his neighbors, and recruit his army from his own vassals.
It was the Geraldines who played the most historic part among these
Palatines, the houses of Kildare and Desmond both being branches of
this famous Norman family, which was always in high favor with the
English sovereign, and always at war with the rival house of Ormond,
the next most powerful Anglo-Norman family, descended from Thomas à
Becket. These barons, or "Lords of the Pale," were, of course,
supposed to be the intermediaries for the King's authority. But the
Geraldines seem to have found plenty of time to build up their own
fortunes, and as peace with their neighbors was sometimes more
conducive to that pursuit, alliances with native chiefs and marriages
with their daughters had in time made of them pretty good Irishmen.
But our main purpose is not to follow the fortunes of these picturesque
and romantic robbers who considered all Ireland their legitimate prey,
but rather those of the hapless native population, dispossessed of
their homes, hiding in forests and morasses, and whom it was the policy
of the English {208} Government to efface in their own country. These
pages will tell of many efforts to compel loyalty, but not one effort
to _win_ the loyalty of the Irish people is recorded in history! No
race in the world is more susceptible to kindness and more easily
reached by personal influences, and there are none of whom a passionate
loyalty is more characteristic. What might have been the effect of a
policy of kindness instead of exasperation, we can only guess. But we
can all see plainly enough the disastrous results which have come from
pouring vitriol upon open wounds, and from treating a nation as if they
were not only intruders but outlaws in their own land.
Listen to the Statutes of Kilkenny, passed by an obedient Parliament at
a time when Edward III. was depending upon sinewy, clean-limbed young
Irishmen to fight his battles in France and help him to win _Crécy_.
(Which they did.) These are some of the provisions of the statute:
Marriage between English and Irish is punishable by death in most
terrible form. It is high treason to give horses, goods, or weapons of
any sort to the Irish. War with the natives {209} is binding upon good
colonists. To speak the language of the country is a penal offence,
and the killing of an Irishman is not to be reckoned as a crime.
But in spite of the ferocity of her purpose, England grew lax. She had
great wars on her hands, and more important interests to look after.
Things were left to the Geraldines, and to the Irish Parliament, which
was controlled by the Lords of the Pale. Intermarriages, against which
horrible penalties had once been enforced, had become frequent, and
many dispossessed chiefs, notably the O'Neills, had recovered their own
lands. So, when Henry VII. came to the throne, although the Norman
banners had for three centuries floated over Ireland, the English
territory, "the Pale," was really reduced to a small area about Dublin.
Henry VII. determined to change all this. Sir Edward Poynings came
charged with a mission, and Parliament passed an Act called _Poynings
Act_, by which English laws were made operative in Ireland as in
England. When Henry VIII. succeeded his father, the astute Wolsey soon
doubted the fidelity of the Geraldines. Of what use {210} were the
Statutes of Kilkenny and the Poynings Act, when the ruling Anglo-Irish
house acted as if they did not exist! He planned their downfall. The
great Earl of Kildare was summoned to London, and six of the doomed
house were beheaded in the Tower. The Reformation had given a new
aspect to the troubles in Ireland. Henry's attack upon the Church drew
together the native Irish and the Anglo-Irish. The struggle had been
hitherto only one over territory, between these naturally hostile
classes; now they were drawn together by a common peril to their
Church, and when, in 1560, Queen Elizabeth had passed the famous Act of
Uniformity, making the Protestant liturgy compulsory, the exasperation
had reached an acute stage, and the sense of former wrongs was
intensified by this new oppression. Ireland was filled with hatred and
burning with desire for vengeance, and there was one proud family in
Ulster, the O'Neills, which was preparing to defy all England. They
scornfully threw away the title "Earl of Tyrone," bestowed upon the
head of their house by Henry VIII,, and declared that by virtue {211}
of the old Irish law of Tanistry, Shane O'Neill was King of Ulster! It
was a test case of the validity of Irish or English laws. "Shane the
Proud," the King of Ulster, at the invitation of Elizabeth, appeared
with his wild followers at her Court, wearing their saffron shirts and
battle-axes. The tactful Queen patched up a peace with her rival, and
then made sure that his head should in a few weeks adorn the walls of
Dublin Castle. His forfeited kingdom was thickly planted with English
and Scotch settlers, who, when they tried to settle, were usually
killed by the O'Neills. The only thing to be done was to exterminate
this troublesome tribe. This grew into the larger purpose of
extirpating the whole of the obnoxious native population. The
Geraldines were not all dead, and this atrocious plan led to the famous
Geraldine League, and that to the Desmond Rebellion. The league which
was to be the avenger of centuries of wrong, was a Catholic one. The
Earl of Desmond had long been in communication with Rome and with
Spain, enlisting their sympathies for their co-religionists in Ireland.
A recent event {212} helped to steel the hearts of the natives against
pity should they succeed. A rising in Connaught had, at the suggestion
of Sir Francis Crosby, been put down in the following way. The chiefs
and their kinsmen, four hundred in number, were invited to a banquet in
the fort of Mullaghmast. But one man escaped alive from that feast of
death! One hundred and eighty from the clan of O'Moore alone were
slaughtered. It was "Rory O'Moore" who did not attend the banquet, who
kept alive the memory of the awful event for many a year by his
battle-cry, "Remember Mullaghmast!" Now the long-impending battle was
on, with a Geraldine for a standard-bearer. But it was in vain.
Another Earl of Kildare perished in the Tower, and another Desmond head
was sent there as a warning against disloyalty! Those who escaped the
slaughter fell by the executioner, and the remnant, hiding from both,
perished by famine. But Munster was "pacified." The enormous Desmond
estate, a hundred miles in territory, was confiscated and planted with
settlers who would undertake the doubtful task of settling.
{213}
The smothered fires next broke out in Ulster--the brilliant Earl of
Tyrone headed the rebellion bearing his name, with Spain as an ally.
The Queen sent the Earl of Essex to crush Tyrone. His failure to crush
or even to check the great leader, and his extraordinary conduct in
consenting to an armistice at the moment when he might have compelled a
surrender, brought such a reprimand from the furious Queen that he
rushed back to England, and to his death. Another and more successful
leader came--Mountjoy. The rebellion was put down, its leader exiled,
and his estate, comprising six entire counties, was confiscated,
planted with Scotch settlers, and Ulster, too, was "pacified."
The reign of Charles I. revived hope in Ireland. He wanted money, and
when Strafford came bearing profuse promises of religious and civil
liberty, and the righting of wrongs, a grateful Parliament at once
voted the £100,000 demanded for the immediate use of the Crown, also
10,000 foot and 1,000 horse for his use in the impending revolution,
which was soon precipitated by the attempt of Charles and Laud to force
the liturgy of the Established Church upon {214} the people in
Scotland. Between the Scotch Presbyterians and the Irish Catholics
there was the bitterest hatred engendered during the long strife
between the natives and the Scotch settlers. So the King's cause was
Ireland's cause, his enemies were her enemies, and his triumph would
also be hers. The day of liberation seemed at hand. The Lords of the
Pale were in constant communication with the King and ready to
co-operate with him in his designs upon Scotland. Such was the
situation when Charles, under the pressure of his need of money,
summoned the Parliament (1641)--the famous Long Parliament--which was
destined to sit for twenty eventful years.
Well would it be for Ireland if it could blot out the memory of that
year (1641) and the horrid event it recalls. The story briefly told is
that a plot, having for its end a general forcible exodus of the hated
settlers, was discovered and defeated, when a disappointed and
infuriated horde of armed men spent their rage upon a community of
Scotch settlers in Armagh and Tyrone, whom they massacred with horrible
barbarities.
There is no reason to believe this deed was {215} premeditated; but it
occurred, and was atrocious in details and appalling in magnitude.
There can be no justification for massacre at any time; but if there
were no background of cruelty for this particular one, it would stand
out blacker even than it does upon the pages of history. There were
many massacres behind it--massacres committed not to avenge wrongs, but
to accomplish them! The massacre of Protestants by Irish Catholics is
in itself no more hideous than the massacre of Irish Catholics by
Protestants. And was it strange that in their first chance at
retaliation, this half-civilized people treated their oppressors as
their oppressors had many, many times treated them? Could anything
else have been expected? especially when we learn that the Scotch
Presbyterians in Tyrone and Armagh immediately retaliated by murdering
thirty Irish Catholic families who were in no way implicated in the
horror!
Strafford's head had fallen in the first days of the Long Parliament;
then Archbishop Laud met the same fate, and finally the execution of
Charles I. at Whitehall, in 1649, put an end to the dreams of
liberation. {216} Almost the first thing to occupy the attention of
Cromwell was the settling of accounts with the Catholic rebels in
Ireland, who had for years been intriguing with the traitor King and
were even now plotting with the Pope's nuncio, Rinucini, for the return
of the exiled Prince Charles.
It required six years and 600,000 lives for Cromwell to inflict proper
punishment upon Ireland for these offences and the massacre of 1641; or
rather, to _prepare_ for the punishment which was now to begin, and for
which we shall search history in vain for a parallel! The heroic
Cromwellian scheme--which was carried out to the letter--was this: The
entire native population were, before May 1, 1654, to depart in a body
for Connaught, there to inhabit a small reservation in a desolate tract
between the Shannon and the sea, of which it was said by one of the
commissioners engaged in this business, "there was not wood enough to
burn, water enough to drown, nor earth enough to bury a man." They
must not go within two miles of the river, nor four miles of the sea, a
cordon of soldiers being permanently stationed with orders to shoot
{217} anyone who overstepped such limits. Any Irish who after the date
named were found east of the appointed line were to suffer death.
Resistance was hopeless. We hear of wild pleas for time, for a brief
delay to collect a few comforts, and make some provision for food and
shelter. But at the beating of the drum and blast of the trumpet, and
urged on by bayonets, the tide of wretched humanity flowed into
Connaught, delicately nurtured ladies and children, the infirm, the
sick, the high and the low, peer and peasant, sharing alike the vast
sentence of banishment and starvation. The fate of others was even
worse, many thousands, ladies, children, people of all ranks, had for
various reasons been left behind. Wholesale executions of so great a
number of helpless beings were impossible, so they were sold in batches
and shipped, most of them to the West Indies and to the newly acquired
island of Jamaica, to be heard of never more; while of the sturdier
remnant left, a few fled into exile in other lands, and the rest to the
woods, there to lead lives of wild brigandage, hiding like wolves in
caves and clefts of rocks, with a price upon their heads!
{218}
Of the two crimes, the Cromwellian settlement and the massacre of 1641,
it seems to the writer of this that Cromwell's is the heavier burden
for the conscience of a nation to carry! Who can wonder that the Irish
did not love England, and that the task of governing a people so
estranged has been a difficult one for English statesmanship ever since?
But the extinction of a nation requires time, even when accomplished by
measures so admirable as those employed in the Cromwellian settlement.
In 1660 Charles II. was on his father's throne, and we hear of hopes
revived, and the expectation that the awful suffering endured for the
father would be rewarded by his son. The land of the exiles in
Connaught had been bestowed by Cromwell upon his followers. But quick
to discern the turn in the tide, these men had helped to bring the
exiled Prince Charles back to his throne. They expected reward, not
punishment! Like many another successful candidate, Charles was
embarrassed by obligations to his friends; besides, he must not offend
the anti-Catholic sentiment in England, which since the massacre of
{219} 1641 had become a passion. The matter of the land was finally
adjudicated; such Irish as could clear themselves of complicity with
the Papal Nuncio and of certain other serious offences, of which almost
all were guilty, might have their possessions restored to them. So a
small portion of the land came back to its owners, and the Duke of
Ormond, a stanch Protestant, was created Viceroy.
Although nominally a Protestant, to the pleasure-loving Charles the
religion of his kingdom was the very smallest concern. So, more from
indifference than indulgence, things became easier for the Irish
Catholics, and exiles began to return. The Protestants, both English
and Irish, were alarmed. With the massacre ever before them, they
believed the only safety for Protestants was in keeping the Irish
papists in a condition of absolute helplessness. There was a
smouldering mass of apprehension which needed only a spark to convert
it into a blaze. The murder of Sir Edward Bery Godfrey, a magistrate,
afforded this spark. Titus Gates, the most worthless scoundrel in all
England, had recently made a sworn statement before this gentleman to
the effect {220} that a plot existed for the murder of the King in
order to place his Catholic brother on the throne, to be followed by a
general massacre of Protestants, the burning of London, and an invasion
of Ireland by the French. When Sir Edward was found dead upon a
hill-side, men's minds leaped to the conclusion that the carnival of
blood had begun. An insane panic set in. Nothing short of death would
satisfy the popular frenzy. The Roman Catholic Archbishop, Dr.
Plunkett, a man revered and beloved even by Protestants, was dragged to
London, and for complicity in a French plot which never existed, and
for aiding a French invasion which had never been contemplated, was
hanged, drawn, and quartered. Innocent victims were torn from their
homes, fifteen sent to the gallows, and 2,000 languished in prisons,
while a suite of apartments at Whitehall and £600 a year was bestowed
upon Gates, who was greeted as the saviour of his country! In two
years more Gates was driven from his apartment at Whitehall for calling
the heir to the throne a traitor, was found guilty of perjury, and
sentenced to be pilloried, flogged, and imprisoned for life. {221} And
so ended the famous "Popish Plot" of 1678.
In 1685 Charles II. died, and was succeeded by his brother, James II.
It was precisely because this ignominious reign was so disastrous to
England, that it was a period of brief triumph for Ireland. That
country was the corner-stone for the political structure which James
had long contemplated. It was the stronghold for the Catholicism which
he intended should become the religion of his kingdom. The Duke of
Ormond was deposed, and a Catholic filled the office of Viceroy in
Ireland. At last their turn had come, and no time was lost. An Irish
Parliament was summoned, in which there were just six Protestants. All
the things of which they had dreamed for years were accomplished. The
Poynings Act was repealed. Irish disabilities were removed. The Irish
proprietors dispossessed by the Act of Settlement had their lands
restored to them. All Protestants, under terrible penalties, were
ordered to give up their arms before a certain day. 'Men' only
recently with a price upon their heads were now officers in the King's
service, and were {222} quartering their soldiers upon the estates of
the Protestants. There was a general exodus of the Protestants, some
fleeing to England and others into the North, where they finally
entrenched themselves in the cities of Enniskillen and Londonderry,
winning for that last-named city imperishable fame by their heroic
defence during a siege which lasted one hundred and five days.
In the meantime it had become evident in England that the safety of the
kingdom demanded the expulsion of James. His son-in-law, William of
Orange, accepted an invitation to come and share the English throne
with his wife Mary. The fugitive King found a refuge with his friend
and co-conspirator, Louis XIV., and from France continued to direct the
revolutionary movements in Ireland, which he intended to use as a
stepping-stone to his kingdom.
But for Catholic Ireland all these over-turnings meant only a
realization of the long-prayed-for event, a separation from England, a
kingdom of their own, with the Catholic James to reign over them. When
he arrived with his fleet and his French officers and munitions of war,
provided by Louis {223} XIV., he was embraced with tears of rapturous
joy. Their "Deliverer" had come! He passed under triumphal arches and
over flower-strewn roads on his way to Dublin Castle. But almost
before these flowers had faded, James had met the army of William, the
"Battle of the Boyne" had been fought and lost (1690), and as fast as
the winds would carry him he had fled back to France.
As the city of Londonderry had been the last refuge for the Protestants
in the North, it was in the city of Limerick that the Irish Catholics
made their last stand in the South. And the two names stand for
companion acts of valor and heroism. Saarsfield's magnificent defence
of the latter city after the flight of the King and during the terrible
siege by William's army under Ginkel, is the one luminous spot in the
whole campaign of disaster and defeat. With the surrender of Limerick
the end had come. Their "Deliverer" was again a fugitive in France,
and Ireland was face to face with an austere Protestant King, once more
to be called to account and to receive punishment for her crimes.
By the famous Articles of Limerick the terms of the surrender, wrung by
Saarsfield's {224} valor from the English commander, were more
favorable than could have been expected. These were a full pardon, and
a restoration of the rights enjoyed by the Catholics under Charles II.
The army, with its officers, was to go into exile, and they might
choose either the service of William in England, or enroll themselves
in the service of France, Spain, or other European countries. The
latter was the choice of all except a very few; and when the
heart-rending separation was over, wives and mothers clinging in
despair to the retreating vessels, the last act in the Great Rebellion
of 1690 was finished.
Of course the Poynings law was restored, the recent Acts repealed, and
a new period had commenced for Ireland; a period of quiet, but a quiet
not unlike that of the graveyard, the sort of quiet which makes the
wounded and exhausted animal cease to struggle with his captors. For a
whole century we are to hear of no more revolts, risings, or
rebellions. There was nothing left to revolt. Nothing left to rise!
The bone and sinew of the nation had gone to fight under strange
banners upon foreign battle-fields, so there was left a nation of
non-combatants, {225} with spirit broken and hope extinguished, and
grown so pathetically patient, that we hear not a single remonstrance
as William's cold-blooded decrees, known as the "Penal Code," are
placed in operation. These enactments were not blood-thirsty, not
sanguinary, like those of former reigns, but just a deliberate process
apparently designed to convert the Irish into a nation of outcasts, by
destroying every germ of ambition and drying up every spring which is
the source of self-respecting manhood.
Here are a few of the provisions of the famous, or infamous, code: No
Papist could acquire or dispose of property; nor could he own a horse
of the value of more than £5; and any Protestant offering that sum for
a horse he must accept it. He might not practise any learned
profession, nor teach a school, nor send his children to school at home
or abroad. Every barrister, clerk, and attorney must take a solemn
oath not for any purpose to employ persons belonging to that religious
faith. The discovery of any weapon rendered its Catholic owner liable
to fines, whipping, the pillory, and imprisonment. He could not
inherit, or {226} even receive property as a gift from Protestants.
The oldest son of a Catholic, by embracing the Protestant faith, became
the heir-at-law to the whole estate of his father, who was reduced to
the position of life-tenant; and any child by the same Act might be
taken away from its father and a portion of his property assigned to
it; while it was the privilege of the wife who apostatized, to be freed
from her husband, and to have assigned to her a proportion of his
property.
The not unnatural result of these last-named enactments was that many
were driven to feigned conversions in order to keep their families from
starvation. It is said that when old Lady Thomond was reproached for
having bartered her soul by professing the Protestant faith, her quick
retort was, "Is it not better that one old woman should burn, than that
all of the Thomonds should be beggars?"
More details are unnecessary after saying that by a decision of Lord
Chancellor Bowes and Chief-Justice Robinson it was declared that "the
law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman {227}
Catholic," while the English Bishop at Meath declared from his pulpit,
"We are not bound to keep faith with papists." And it must be
remembered that the people placed under this monstrous system of wrong
and degradation were not a handful, whom the welfare of a community
required should be dealt with severely, they were a large majority of
the population, a nation dwelling in their own country, where, by a
Parliament supposed to be their own, they were governed by a minority
of aliens.
In this time of "Protestant ascendancy," as it is called, there were,
of course, only Protestants in the Parliament. They had all the
authority, they alone were competent to vote; they were the privileged
and upper class; an Irish papist, whatever his rank, being the social
inferior of his Protestant neighbor. But let it not be supposed that
the Irish Protestants were on that account happy! They had been
planted in that land as a breakwater against the native Irish flood,
but for all that, England had no idea of permitting them to build up a
dangerous prosperity in Ireland. The theory governing English
statesmanship was that that {228} country must be kept helpless; and to
that end it must be kept poor. During the reign of Charles II. the
importing of Irish cattle into England had been forbidden. The effects
of this prohibition, so ruinous at first, were at last offset by the
discovery that sheep might be made a greater source of profit at home,
than when shipped to England. There was an increasing demand in Europe
for Irish wool, and skilled manufacturers of woollen goods from abroad
had come and started factories, thus giving employment to thousands of
people.
When it was realized in England that a profitable Irish industry had
actually been established, there was a panic. The traders demanded
legislative protection from Irish competition, which came in this form.
In 1699 an Act was passed prohibiting the export of Irish woollen
goods, not alone to England, but to all other countries. The factories
were closed. The manufacturers left the country, never to return, and
a whole population was thrown out of employment. A tide of emigration
then commenced which has never ceased; such as could, fleeing from the
inevitable famine which in a land always {229} so perilously near
starvation must surely come.
There was no market now for the wool which the factories would have
consumed. At home it brought 5d. a pound, but in France a half crown!
The long, deeply indented coast-line was well adapted for smuggling.
French vessels were hovering about, waiting an opportunity to get it;
the people were hungry, and might be hungrier, for there was a famine
in the land! Is it strange that they were converted into law-breakers,
and that wool was packed in caves all along the coast; and that a vast
contraband trade carried on by stealth, took the place of a legitimate
one which was made impossible?
So it became apparent that any efforts to establish profitable
enterprises in Ireland would be put down with a strong hand. The
colonists who had been placed there by England felt bitterly at finding
themselves thus involved in the pre-determined ruin of the country with
which they had identified their own fortunes. Their love of the
parent-country waned, some even turning to and adopting the persecuted
creed. The voice of {230} the native people, utterly stifled, was
never heard in Parliament, and struggles which occurred there were
between Protestants and Protestants; between those who did, and those
who did not, uphold the policy of the Government. Such was the
condition which remained practically unchanged until the middle of the
eighteenth century; a small discontented upper class, chiefly aliens;
below them the peasantry, the mass of the people, whose benumbed
faculties and empty minds had two passions to stir their murky
depths--love for their religion, and hatred of England.
The first voice raised in support of the constitutional rights of
Ireland was that of William Molyneux, an Irish gentleman and scholar, a
philosopher, and the intimate friend of Locke. In the latter part of
the seventeenth century he issued a pamphlet which in the gentlest
terms called attention to the fact that the laws and liberties of
England which had been granted to Ireland five hundred years before had
been invaded, in that the rights of their Parliament, a body which
should be sacred and inviolable everywhere, had been abolished.
Nothing could have been milder than this {231} presentation of a
well-known fact; but it raised a furious storm. The constitutional
rights of Ireland! Was the man mad? The book was denounced in
Parliament as libellous and seditious, and was destroyed by the common
hangman. Then Dean Swift, half-Irishman and more than half-Englishman,
an ardent High-Churchman and a vehement anti-papist, published a
satirical pamphlet called "A Modest Proposal," in which he suggests
that the children of the Irish peasants should be reared for food, and
the choicest ones reserved for the landlords, who having already
devoured the substance of the fathers, had the best right to feast upon
their children. This was made the more pungent because it came from a
man who so far from being an Irish patriot, was an English Tory. He
cared little for Ireland or its people, but he hated tyranny and
injustice; and was stirred to a fierce wrath at what he himself
witnessed while Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Then it was
that with tremendous scorn he hurled those shafts of biting wit and
satire, which struck deeper than the cogent reasoning of the gentle and
philosophic Molyneux.
{232}
So the spell of silence was broken, and there began to form a small
patriotic party in Parliament, which in 1760 was led by Henry Flood,
from Kilkenny. A day was dawning after the long night; and when in
1775 Henry Grattan's more powerful personality was joined with Flood's,
then that brief day had reached its highest noon. Next to that of
Edmund Burke, Grattan's is the greatest name on the roll of native-born
Irishmen. Happy was that country in having such an advocate and guide
at the critical period when the American colonies were throwing off the
yoke of English tyranny. The wrongs suffered by the English colonies
in America were trifling compared with those endured by that other
English colony in Ireland. If ever there was a time to press upon
England the necessity for loosening their shackles it was now, when
their battle was being fought across the sea. Every argument in
support of the independence of America applied with equal force to the
legislative independence of Ireland. It was Grattan who at this
momentous time guided the course of events. A Protestant, yet
possessing the entire confidence of the Catholics; {233} an
uncompromising patriot, yet commanding the respect and admiration of
the English Government; inflexibly opposed to Catholic exclusion and
the ascendancy of a Protestant minority, and as inflexibly opposed to
any act of violence, he was determined to obtain redress--but to obtain
it only by means of the strictest constitutional methods. It was upon
the _constitutionality_ of their claims that he threw all the energy of
the movement growing out of the American war. His personal sympathies
were with the struggling colonists; yet he voted for men and money to
sustain the English cause. Equal rights bestowed upon Catholics, who
were in large majority, would transfer to them the power; yet he, a
Protestant, passionately advocated a removal of the disabilities of
four-fifths of the people. It was in this spirit of wise moderation
and even-handed justice that Grattan took the tangled web of the Irish
cause out of the hands of the more impetuous Flood; his eloquence and
his moving appeals keeping two objects steadily in view--the
independence of the Irish Parliament, and the removal of the fetters
from Irish trade.
{234}
Times had changed since Molyneux's gentle remonstrance, when Grattan's
famous Declaration of Rights was being supported by eighteen counties,
and still more changed when at last, in 1782, an Irish House of Commons
marched in a body to present to the Lord Lieutenant their address
demanding freedom of commerce and manufacture.
An unlooked-for train of events had given new weight to this demand.
England had realized the necessity of protecting Ireland from a
possible invasion growing out of the American war. So it was
determined that a body of militia should be levied, in which only
Protestants should be enrolled. The attempt to raise the men or the
money in Ireland was a failure, and while defenceless, the country was
thrown into a panic by the descent of Paul Jones, the American naval
hero, upon Belfast and other points on the coast. The citizens of
Belfast enrolled themselves for their own defence. Other towns
followed, and the contagion spread with such rapidity that in a short
time there was in existence a volunteer force of 60,000 men.
Dismayed at the swiftness of the movement, England hesitated; but how
could she {235} deny her colony the right of self-defence? They were
given the arms which had been intended for the Protestant militia. And
so, when the House of Commons marched in a body to the Lord Lieutenant,
and presented their address to the Crown, it had 60,000 armed men
behind it!
The Viceroy wrote to England that unless the trade restrictions were
removed, he would not answer for the consequences. Lord North had
enough to do with one rebellion on his hands; and, besides, George III.
might have need of some of those 60,000 soldiers before he got through
with America. So the Prime Minister yielded. The first victory was
gained, and the other quickly followed. American independence was
acknowledged; England was in no mood to defy another colony with
rebellion in its heart. The Poynings Act once more, and now for all
time, was repealed, and the Irish Parliament was a free and independent
body. Grateful for this partial emancipation, it voted £100,000 to
Grattan.
But this legislative triumph did not feed the people. It was only the
seed out of which future prosperity was to grow. A vague expectation
of instant relief was {236} bitterly disappointed when it was found
instead that they were sinking deeper every day in the hopeless abyss
of poverty and degradation. There had come into existence an
organization called the "White Boys," with no political or religious
purpose, simply a fraternity of wretchedness; beings made desperate by
want, standing ready to commit any violence which offered relief. At
the same time an irritation born of misery brought the Protestants and
Catholics in the North into fierce collision; and the germ of the
future Orange societies appeared.
These small storm-centres were all soon to be drawn into a larger one.
In 1791 the "Society of United Irishmen" was formed at Belfast. It was
merely a patriotic attempt to sink minor differences in an organization
in which all could join. With the rising of the general tide of misery
it changed in character, and fell into the control of a band of
restless spirits led by Wolfe Tone, who maintained that since
constitutional reforms had failed, force must be their resort. He sent
agents to Paris, and the new French republic consented to assist in an
attempt to establish a republic in Ireland.
{237}
When the year 1798 closed, there had been another unsuccessful
rebellion. Ferocity had been met by ferocity, and Wolfe Tone and
Edward Fitzgerald (a Geraldine) had perished in the ruin of the
structure they had wildly built. Flood and Grattan had stood aloof
from this miserable undertaking. It was now eighteen years since the
constitutional triumph which had proved so barren. England was in
stern mood. Pitt had long believed that the effacement of the Irish
Parliament and a legislative union of the two countries was the only
solution. The Irish Protestants were shown the benefits of the
protection this would afford them, while the bait offered to the
Catholics was emancipation, the removal of disabilities which it was
intimated would quickly follow. But no one was won to the cause,
Grattan, in the most impassioned way protesting against it, and the
measure was defeated. Then followed the darkest page in the chapter.
It is well known that large amounts of money were paid to the owners of
eighty-five doubtful boroughs--boroughs which would be effaced by the
union--that peerages and {238} baronetcies were generously distributed,
and that shortly after, the measure was again brought up and carried!
So by the Act of Union, 1800, the Irish Parliament had ceased to exist,
and the two countries were politically merged. It is certain that the
union was hateful to the Irish people, and that it was tainted by the
suspicion of dishonorable methods, which one hundred years have failed
to disprove. It may have been the best thing possible, under the
circumstances, for Ireland; but to the Irish patriots it seemed a
crowning act of oppression accomplished by treachery.
You cannot combine oil and water by pouring them into one glass. The
union was not a union. The natures of the two races were utterly
hostile. Centuries of cruel wrong and outrage had accentuated every
undesirable trait in the Irish people. A nature simple, confiding,
spontaneous, and impulsive, had become suspicious, explosive, and
dangerous. Pugnacity had grown into ferocity. A joyous,
light-hearted, and engaging people had become a sullen and vindictive
one; famine, misery, and ignorance had put their stamp of degradation
{239} upon the peasantry, the majority of the people. Intermarriage,
so savagely interdicted for centuries, was the only thing which could
ever have fused two such contrasting races. Such a fusion might have
benefited both, in giving a wholesome solidity to the Irish, while the
stolid English would have been enriched by the fascinating traits and
the native genius of their brilliant neighbors. But the opportunity
had been lost; and enlightened English statesmanship is still seeking
for a plan which will convert an unnatural and artificial union into a
real one.
The delusive promises of the relief which was to come with union were
not fulfilled. Catholics remained under the same monstrous ban as
before, and things were practically unchanged. Young Robert Emmett's
abortive attempt to seize Dublin Castle in 1803 intensified conditions,
but did not alter them. The pathetic story of his capture while
seeking a parting interview with Sarah Curran, to whom he was engaged,
and his death by hanging the following morning, is one of the smaller
tragedies in the greater one; and the death of Sarah {240} from a
broken heart, soon after, is the subject of Moore's well-known lines.
The most colossal figure in the story of Ireland had now appeared.
Daniel O'Connell, unlike the other great leaders, was a Catholic. In
the language of another, "he was the incarnation of the Irish nation."
All that they were, he was, on a majestic scale. His whole tremendous
weight was thrown into the subject of Catholic emancipation; and,
although a giant in eloquence and in power, it took him just
twenty-nine years to accomplish it. In the year 1829, even Wellington,
that incarnation of British conservatism, bent his head before the
storm, and there was a full and unqualified removal of Catholic
disabilities. O'Connell was not content; he did not pause. The
tithe-system, that most odious of oppressions, must go. A starving
nation compelled to support in its own land a Church it considered
blasphemous! A standing army kept in their land to wring this tribute
from them at the point of the bayonet! Think of a people on the brink
of the greatest famine Europe has ever known, being in arrears a
million and a quarter of pounds for tithes {241} for an Established
Church they did not want! Is it strange that Sydney Smith said no
abuse as great could be found in Timbuctoo? Is it a wonder that there
was always disorder and violence from a chronic tithe-war in Ireland,
which it is said has cost a million of lives? But in 1839, in the
second year of Queen Victoria's reign, Parliament gave relief, in the
following ingenious way. The burden was placed upon the _land_; the
landlord must pay the tithe, not the people! The exasperation which
followed took a form with which we are all more or less familiar. With
the increase in rents which, of course, ensued, there commenced an
anti-rent agitation which has never ceased. A repeal of the Union was
the only remedy, and to this O'Connell devoted all his energies.
In 1845, in one black night, a blight fell upon the potato-crop.
Carlyle says "a famine presupposes much." What must be the economic
condition of a people when there is only one such frail barrier between
them and starvation! The famine was the hideous child of centuries.
There is no need to dwell upon its details. Its name expresses all the
horror of those two years, when Europe and {242} America strove in vain
to relieve the famishing nation, even those who had food, dying, it is
said, from the mental anguish produced by witnessing so much suffering
which they could not assuage. The great O'Connell himself died of a
broken heart in beholding this national tragedy. When it was over,
Ireland had lost two millions of its population. Thousands had
perished and thousands more had emigrated from the doomed land to
America, there to keep alive, in the hearts of their children, the
memory of their wrongs.
Out of this wreck and ruin there arose the party of "Young Ireland,"
led, with more or less wisdom, by Mitchell, Smith O'Brien (descended
from Brian Boru), Dillon, and Meagher. Mitchell was soon transported,
and later O'Brien and Meagher were under sentence of death, which was
afterward commuted, Meagher surviving to lay down his life for the
North in the civil war in America. It is not strange that these men
were driven to futile insurrections, maddened as they were by the sight
of their countrymen, not yet emerged from the horrors of famine, forced
in droves out of the shelter of their {243} miserable cabins, for
non-payment of rent. It has been told in foregoing pages how it came
about that absentee English landlords owned a great part of Ireland.
From this had arisen the custom of subletting; and when it is known
that sometimes four people stood between the tenant and the landlord,
it will be realized how difficult it was to place responsibility, to do
justice, or to show mercy in such an iniquitous system. It was the
system, not the landlord, that was vicious. Eviction has done as much
as famine to depopulate Ireland. It has driven millions of Irishmen
into America; and the cruelty and even ferocity with which it has been
carried out cannot be overstated. Whatever the weather, for the sick,
or even for the dying, there was no pity. Out they must go; and to
make sure that they would not return, the cabin was unroofed! And
then, if the wretched being died under the stars by the road-side, he
might, in the words of Mitchell, "lift his dying eyes and thank God
that he perished under the best constitution in the world!"
At the close of the American civil war it was believed by Irishmen that
the strained {244} relations between England and America would lead to
open conflict. An organization named Fenians (after the ancient Feni)
formed a plan for a rising in Ireland, which was to be simultaneous
with a raid into Canada by way of America.
The United States Government took vigorous action in the matter of the
Canadian raid, and the failure of this and of other violent attempts at
home put an end to the least creditable of all such organizations.
It was in 1869 that Mr. Gladstone realized his long-cherished plan for
the disestablishment of the Church in Ireland. The generations which
had hoped and striven for this had passed away, and in the Ireland
which remained, there was scarcely spirit enough left to rejoice over
anything. The words Home Rule were the only ones with power to arouse
hope. With the Liberal Party on their side, this seemed possible of
attainment. In 1875 Charles Parnell entered the House of Commons and
became the leader of a Home Rule Party. But the question of evictions,
of which there had been 10,000 in four years, became so pressing, that
he organized a National Land League, which {245} had for its object the
relief of present distress, and the substitution of
peasant-proprietorship for the existing landlord system; an agrarian
scheme, or dream, to which Mr. Parnell devoted the rest of his life.
Mr. Parnell's weapons were parliamentary. He introduced an obstructive
method in legislation which caused extreme irritation and finally
antagonism between the Liberal Party and his own. This, together with
the unfounded suspicion of complicity in the murder of Lord Frederick
Cavendish, in 1882, militated against Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Act,
which was defeated in 1886; and the cause awaited another champion.
But while the door bearing the alluring words "Home Rule" still remains
rigidly closed, another has unexpectedly opened. One of the first
subjects to engage the attention of King Edward VII. after his
accession was the settlement of the Irish agrarian question which that
practical Monarch recognized as the most essential to the pacification
of his Irish subjects. This has {246} resulted in an ingeniously
devised system of peasant-proprietorship, which is made possible by
Government aid, in money and credit. The New Land Act, embodying this
result, went into effect November 1, 1903, whereby tenants,
sub-tenants, or people who are not tenants may purchase land in small
lots and hold it as _their own_, by the payment of a small annual
rental which applies to the purchase. It is impossible to give here
the complicated details which insure this result with benefit to
landlord, tenant, and also to the Government itself. But a remedy
seems to have been found which accomplishes all this; and the
condition, more demoralizing to Irish life and character than any
other, has been removed. With the sense of peace and permanence, and
even of dignity, which comes from proprietorship it is hoped a new day
is dawning for the peasantry of that unhappy country.
It has been Ireland's misfortune to be geographically allied to one of
the greatest {247} European Powers. She has been fighting for
centuries against the "despotism of fact." She has never once loosened
the grasp fastened upon her in 1171; never had control of her capital
city, which, built by the Northmen, has been the home of her political
masters ever since. Of course everyone knows that when the English
Government solemnly doubts the capacity of the Irish people for Home
Rule, its solicitude is for England, not Ireland.
Francis Meagher, when on trial for his life, said: "If I have committed
a crime, it is because I have read the history of Ireland!" One need
not be an Irish patriot to be in rebellion against the English rule in
that land; and no Protestant can read without shame and indignation the
crimes which have been committed in the name of his Church.
But, in view of the small results of more than eight centuries of
resistance, would it not be wise for the Irish people to abandon the
fight against the "despotism of fact," {248} to give up the attitude of
a conquered people with rebellion in their hearts? Is not this the
right moment, when England is manifesting a desire to be more just, for
Ireland, deeply injured although she is, to accept the olive branch,
and call a truce?
{249}
A SHORT HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.
The northern extremity of the British Isles, bristling with mountains
and with its ragged coast-line deeply fringed by the sea, told in
advance the character of its people. Scotland is the child of the
mountains; and in spite of all that has been done to change their
native character, the word Caledonia still invokes the same
picturesque, liberty-loving race which in the first century, under the
name of Picts, defied Agricola and his Roman legions, and the wall they
had builded. If they have borrowed their name from Ireland, if they
have used the speech and consented to wear the political yoke of the
Anglo-Saxon, they have accepted these things only as convenient
garments for a proud Scottish nationality, which has defied all efforts
to change its essential character.
About four centuries after the Roman invasion, a colony of Scots
(Irish) migrated to {250} the opposite coast, under Fergus, and set up
their little kingdom in Argyleshire, taking with them, perhaps, the
sacred "Stone of Destiny" upon which a long line of Irish kings had
been crowned, and which tradition asserts was "Jacob's Pillow." The
Picts and the Irish Scots were both of the Celtic race, and if they
fought, it was as brothers do, ready in an instant to embrace and make
common cause, which they first did against the Romans. A common enemy
is the surest healer of domestic feuds, and there were many of these to
bring together the two Celtic branches dwelling on the same soil after
the fifth century. Then came the more peaceful fusion through a common
religious faith. St. Columba had been preceded by St. Nimian. But it
was the Irish saint from Donegal who did for the Picts what St. Patrick
had done for the Irish Scots. In the history of the Church there has
never been an awakening of purer spiritual ardor than that which
irradiated from Columba's monastery at Iona.
Why the Irish Scots, occupying only a small bit of territory, should
have fastened their name upon the land of their adoption {251} is not
known. Perhaps it was the magic of that Stone of Destiny! The Picts
had the political centre of their kingdom at Scone, on the river Tay.
It was in 844 that Kenneth M'Alpin made war upon the Irish Scots, the
little kingdom in Argyle was merged with that of the Picts, and by the
eleventh century the latter name had disappeared and the name Scotland
was applied to the whole country. In the two centuries following this
union there were four reigns, in which wars between hostile clans were
diversified by wars with invading Danes, and with the Angles near the
border, with whom there was a chronic struggle, caused by aggressions
upon both sides. Malcolm II. succeeded in defeating the Angles on the
Tweed, seized Lothian, incorporated this bit of old England with his
own kingdom, then died, in 1034, leaving his throne to his grandson,
Duncan. There was the same play of fierce ambitions upon this small
stage as on larger ones. Scottish thanes strove to undermine and
supplant other thanes, just as Norman barons and Scotch-English earls
would do later, and as in other lands and at all times, the dream of
aspiring, intriguing nobles {252} was by some happy chance to snatch
the crown and reign at Scone.
Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, was by birth nearest to the supreme
prize. His wife, whose "undaunted mettle" we all know, had royal blood
in her veins. We also know how the poison of ambition worked in the
once guiltless soul of the thane after the prophecy of the "Weird
Sisters" had commenced its fulfilment. The story was quaintly told a
century before Shakespeare lived, in a history of Scotland by Boece.
The book was written in Latin, and in the sixteenth century was
translated into the Scottish vernacular. It tells of the meeting
between Macbeth, Banquo, and the "Weird Sisters." "The first of thaim
said, 'Hale, Thane of Glammis!' the secound said, 'Hale, Thane of
Cawder!' and the thrid said, 'Hale, King of Scotland!' Then Banquo
said, 'How is it ye gaif to my companyeon not onlie landis and gret
rentis, bot Kingdomes, and gevis me nocht?' To which they reply,
'Thoucht he happin to be ane King, nane of his blude sall eftir him
succeid. Be contrar, thow sail nevir be King, bot of the sal cum mony
Kingis, quhilkis {253} sall rejose the Croun of Scotland!' Then they
evanist out of sicht." This seems to have amused the two friends and
"Fur sam time Banquho wald call Makbeth 'King of Scottis' for
derisioun; and he on the samin maner wald call Banquho 'the fader of
mony Kingis!' Yit, not long efter, it hapnit that the Thane of Cawder
was disinherist and forfaltit of his landis for certane crimes; and his
landis wer gevin be King Duncane to Makbeth. It hapnit in the nixt
nicht that Banquho and Makbeth were sportand togiddir at thair supper,"
and Banquo reminded his friend that there remained only the Crown to
complete the prophecy. Whereupon, "he began to covat the crown." And
then Duncan named his young son Malcolm as his heir, "Quhilk wes gret
displeseir to Makbeth; for it maid plane derogatioun to the thrid
weird," promising him the Crown. "Nochtheless, he thocht, gif Duncane
war slane, he had maist richt to the Croun, be the old lawis of King
Fergus (law of tanistry), becaus he wer nerest of blude thair to," the
text of the old law being, "Quhen young children wer unabil to govern,
the nerrest of thair blude sail regne." Then, {254} when his wife
"calland him oft times, febil cowart, sen he durst not assail ye thing
with manheid and enrage, quhilk is offert to him be benivolence of
fortoun," then, so tempted and so goaded, "Makbeth fand sufficient
opportunite, and slew King Duncane, the VII yeir of his regne, and his
body was buryit in Elgin, and efter tane up and brocht to Colmekill,
quhare it remanis yit, amang the uthir Kingis: fra our Redemption.
MXLVI yeris."
The story told in these quaint words was, without any doubt, read by
Shakespeare, and in the alembic of his imagination grew into the
immortal play. Touched by his genius, the names Dunsinnane and Birnam,
lying close to Scone, are luminous points on the map, upon which the
eye loves to linger. The incidents may not be authentic. We are told
they are not. But Macbeth certainly slew Duncan and was King of
Scotland, and finally met his Nemesis at Dunsinnane, near Birnam Wood,
where Malcolm III., called Canmore, avenged his father's death, slew
the usurper, and was crowned king at Scone, 1054.
The historic point selected by Shakespeare {255} has an important
significance of a different sort. It was the dividing line between the
old and the new. Macbeth's reign marks the close of the Celtic period.
With the advent of Malcolm III., there commenced that infusion of
Teutonic political ideals which was destined at last to merge the
Anglo-Saxon and the Scottish Celt into one political organism.
Malcolm's mother was the sister of the Earl of Northumberland. So the
son of Duncan was half-English; and he became more than half-English
when, somewhat later, he married Margaret, sister of his friend and
guest, "Edgar the Atheling," last claimant of the Saxon throne, who had
taken refuge with him while vainly plotting against William the
Conqueror. This was in 1067, the year after the conquest. So at this
critical period in English history, the door leading to the South,
which had until now been kept bolted and barred, except for hostile
bands, was left ajar. A host of Saxon nobles, following their leader,
Edgar, streamed into Scotland, and soon formed the most powerful
element about the throne, bringing new speech, new ways, new customs;
in fact, doing at Scone precisely what the Norman {256} nobles were at
the same time doing at London, substituting a more advanced
civilization for an existing one. The manners of the Norman nobles
were not more odious to the Saxon nobility in England, than were those
of the Saxons to the proud thanes and people in Scotland. Then Malcolm
began to bestow large grants of land upon his foreign favorites,
accompanied by an almost unlimited authority over their vassals, and
feudalism was introduced into the free land. With these changes there
gradually formed a dialect, a mingling of the two forms of speech,
which became the language of the Court, and of the powerful dwellers in
the Lowlands. And so, in succeeding reigns, the process of blending
went on, the wave of a changed civilization driving before it the
Celtic speech, manners, and habits, into their impregnable fastnesses
in the Highlands, there to preserve the national type in proud
persistence. Such was the condition for one hundred and fifty years,
the Crown in open alliance with aliens, subverting established usages
and fastening an exotic feudalism upon the South; while an angry and
defiant Celtic people remained unsubdued in the North.
{257}
It was a favorite amusement with the Scottish kings to dart across the
border into Northumbria, the disputed district, not yet incorporated
with England, there to waste and burn as much as they could, and then
back again. In one of these forays in 1174, the King, "William the
Lion," was captured by a party of English barons. Henry II. of England
had just returned from Ireland, where he had established his feudal
sovereignty by conquest. Now he saw a chance of accomplishing the same
thing by peaceful methods in Scotland. He named as a price of ransom
for the captive King an acknowledgment of his feudal lordship. The
terms were accepted, and the five castles which they included were
surrendered. Fifteen years later, his son Richard I., the romantic
crusader, gave back to Scotland her castles and her independence. But
what had been done once, would be tried again. So while it was the
steady policy of the English sovereigns to reduce Scotland to a state
of vassalage to England, it was the no less steady aim of the Scottish
kings to extend their own feudal authority to the Highlands and the
islands in the north and west of their own realm, {258} where an
independent people had never yet been brought under its subjection.
In the year 1286 Alexander III. died, and only an infant granddaughter
survived to wear the crown. The daughter of the deceased King had
married the King of Norway, and dying soon after, had left an infant
daughter. It was about this babe that the diplomatic threads
immediately began to entwine. A regency of six nobles was appointed to
rule the kingdom. Then Edward I. of England proposed a marriage
between his own infant son and the little maid. The proposition was
accepted. A ship was sent to Norway to bring the baby Queen to
Scotland, bearing jewels and gifts from Edward; but just before she
reached the Orkneys the "Maid of Norway" died. Edward's plans were
frustrated, and the empty throne of Scotland had many claimants, but
none with paramount right to the succession. In the wrangle which
ensued, when eight ambitious nobles were trying to snatch the prize,
Edward I. intervened to settle the dispute, which had at last narrowed
down to one between two competitors, Bruce and Baliol, both lineally
descended from King David I.
{259}
But the important fact in this mediatorial act of Edward was, that it
was done by virtue of his authority as Over-Lord of Scotland. We are
left to imagine how and why such a monstrous and baseless pretension
was acknowledged without a single protest. But when we reflect that
the eager claimants and their upholders represented, not the people of
Scotland but an aristocratic ruling element, more than half-English
already, it is not so strange that they were willing to pay this price
for the sake of restoring peace and security at a time when everything
was imperilled by an empty throne. There was no organic unity in
Scotland; only a superficial unity, created by the name of king, which
fell into chaos when that name was withdrawn. It was imperative that
someone should be crowned at Scone at once. And so, when Edward, by
virtue of his authority as Over-Lord, gave judgment in favor of John
Baliol, without a single remonstrance Baliol was crowned John I. at
Scone, rendered homage to his feudal lord, and Scotland was a vassal
kingdom (1292). This whole proceeding, thus disposing of the state,
had in no way recognized the existence of a nation. {260} It was an
arrangement between the Scottish nobles and clergy, and the King of
England. When the heralds had, with great ceremony, proclaimed King
Edward Lord Paramount of Scotland, the matter was supposed to be ended,
and it was forgotten that there was beyond the Grampians a proud
people, whose will would have to be broken before their country would
become the _fief_ of an English king. But Baliol soon discovered how
empty was the honor he had purchased. There was now a right of appeal
from the Scottish Parliament and courts to those of Edward I. Such
appeals were made, and King John I. was with scant ceremony summoned to
London to plead his own cause before a Parliament which humiliated and
insulted him.
In 1295, so intolerable had his position become, that Baliol threw off
the yoke of vassalage, secured an alliance with France, and gathered
such of his nobles as he could about him, prepared to resist the
authority of Edward; whereupon that enraged King marched into the
rebellious land, swept victoriously from one city to another, gathering
up towns and castles by the way; then took the {261} sacred Stone of
Destiny from Scone as a memorial of his conquest, and left the penitent
vassal King helpless and forlorn in his humiliated kingdom. It was
then that the famous stone was built into the coronation-chair, where
it still remains.
We have now come to a name which, as Wordsworth says, is "to be found
like a wild flower, all over his dear country." Everywhere there are
places sacred to his memory. The story of Wallace is a brief one--an
impassioned resolve to free his enslaved country, one supreme triumph,
then defeat, an ignominious and cruel death in London, to be followed
by imperishable renown for himself, and for Scotland--freedom. Sir
William Wallace belonged to the lower class of Scotch nobility. He had
never sworn allegiance to Edward I. His career of outlawry commenced
by his making small attacks upon small English posts. As his successes
increased, so did his followers, until so formidable had the movement
become, that Edward learned there was a rising in his vassal kingdom.
But it could not be much, he thought, as he had all the nobles, and how
could there be a rising {262} without nobles? So he despatched a small
force to straighten things out. But a few weeks later, Edward himself
was in Scotland with an army. Wallace was besieging the Castle of
Dundee, when he heard that the King was marching on Stirling. With the
quick instinct of the true military leader, he saw his opportunity. He
reached the rising ground commanding the bridge of Stirling, while the
English army of 50,000 were still on the opposite side of the river.
When the English general, seeing his disadvantage, offered to make
terms, Wallace replied that his terms were "the freedom of Scotland."
The attack made as they were crossing the bridge resulted in the panic
of the English and a rout in which the greater part of the fleeing army
was slain and drowned (1297). Baliol had been swept from the scene and
was in the Tower of London, so Wallace was supreme. But in less than a
year Edward had returned with an army overwhelming in numbers, and
Wallace met a crushing defeat at Falkirk. We next hear of him on the
Continent, still planning for Scotland's liberation, then hunted and
finally caught in Glasgow, dragged to London in chains, {263} there to
be tried and condemned for treason. Had they condemned him as a rebel
and an outlaw there would have been justice, for these he was. But a
traitor he never was, for he had never sworn allegiance to Edward. He
had fought against the invaders of his country, and for this he died a
felon's death, with all the added cruelties of Norman law. He was
first tortured, then executed in a way to strike terror to the souls of
similar offenders (1304). But his work was accomplished. He had
lighted the fires of patriotism in Scotland. The power of his name to
stir the hearts of his people like a trumpet-blast, is best described
by the words of Robert Burns: "The story of Wallace poured a Scottish
prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the
flood-gates of life shut, in eternal rest." To be praised by the bards
was the supreme reward of Celtic heroes. What did death matter, in
form however terrible, to one who was to be so remembered nearly five
centuries later by Scotland's greatest bard?
We are accustomed to regard the name of Bruce as the intensest
expression of a Scottish nationality, and of its aspirations {264}
toward liberty. But it had no such meaning at this time. The ancestor
of the family was Robert de Bruis, a Norman knight who came over with
the Conqueror. His son, Robert, was one of those hated foreign
adventurers at the Court of David I., and received from that King a
large grant and the Lordship of Annandale. The grandson of this first
Earl of Annandale married Isabel, the granddaughter of David I., and so
it was that the house of Bruce came into the line of royal succession.
It was Robert, the son of Isabel, who competed with Baliol for the
throne of Scotland.
Robert Bruce, who stands forth as the greatest character in Scottish
history, was twelve years old when his grandfather was defeated by
Baliol in this competition. No family in the vassal kingdom was more
trusted by England's King, nor more friendly to his pretensions. The
young Robert's father had accompanied King Edward to Palestine in his
own youth, and he himself was being trained at the English Court. His
English mother had large estates in England, and, in fact there was
everything to bind him to the King's cause. He and his father, {265}
and the High Steward of Scotland, together with other Scottish-Norman
nobles, had been with the King in his triumphal march through Scotland
when Baliol was dethroned, and at the time of the rising under Wallace,
Robert Bruce had not one thing in common with him or his cause. And as
for the people in the Highlands, if he ever thought of them at all, it
was as troublesome malcontents, who needed to be ruled with a strong
hand. Wallace was in rebellion against an established authority, to
which all his own antecedents reconciled him. How the change was
wrought, how his bold and ardent spirit came to its final resolve, we
can only surmise. Was it through a complicated struggle of forces, in
which ambition played the greatest part? Or did the splendid heroism
of Wallace, and the spirit it evoked in the people, awaken a slumbering
patriotism in his own romantic soul? Or was it the prescience of a
leader and statesman, who saw in this newly developed popular force an
opportunity for a double triumph, the emancipation of Scotland, and the
realization of his own kingship?
Whatever the process, a change was going {266} on in his soul. He
wavered, sometimes inclining to the party of Wallace, and sometimes to
that of the King, until the year 1304. In that year, the very one in
which Wallace died, he made a secret compact with the Bishop of
Lamberton, pledging mutual help against any opponents. While at the
Court of Edward, shortly after this, he discovered that the King had
learned of this compromising paper. There was nothing left but flight.
He mounted his horse and swiftly returned to Scotland. Now the die was
cast. His only competitor for the throne was Comyn. They met to
confer over some plan of combination, and in a dispute which arose,
Bruce slew his rival. Whether it was premeditated, or in the heat of
passion, who could say? But Comyn was the one obstacle to his purpose,
and he had slain him, had slain the highest noble in the state! All of
England, and now much of Scotland, would be against him; but he could
not go back. He resolved upon a bold course. He went immediately to
Scone, ascended the throne, and surrounded by a small band of
followers, was crowned King of Scotland, March 27, 1306. He soon
learned {267} the desperate nature of the enterprise upon which he had
embarked. There was nothing in his past to inspire the confidence of
the patriots at the North, and at the South he was pursued with
vindictive fury by the friends of the slain Comyn. Edward, stirred as
never before, was preparing for an invasion, issuing proclamations; no
mercy to be shown to the rebels. Bruce's English estates, inherited
from his mother, were confiscated, and an outlaw and a fugitive, he was
excommunicated by the Pope! Unable to meet the forces sent by Edward,
he placed his Queen in the care of a relative and then disappeared,
wandering in the Highlands, hiding for one whole winter on the coast of
Ireland and supposed to be dead. His Queen and her ladies were torn
from their refuge and his cousin hanged.
Had Robert Bruce died at this time he would have been remembered not as
a patriot, but as an ambitious noble who perished in a desperate
attempt to make himself king. But his undaunted soul was working out a
different ending to the story. In the spring of 1307 he returned
undismayed. With a small band of followers he met an English {268}
army, defeated the Earl of Pembroke at Ayr, and with this success the
tide turned. The people caught the contagion of his intrepid spirit,
and in the seven years which followed, he shines out as one of the
great captains of history. By the year 1313 every castle save Berwick
and Stirling had surrendered to him. Vast preparations were made in
England for the defence of this latter stronghold.
It was on the burn (stream) two miles from Stirling that Bruce
assembled his 30,000 men, and made his plans to meet Edward with his
100,000. On the morning of the 23d of June, 1314, he exhorted his
Scots to fight for their liberty. How they did it, the world will
never forget! And while Scotland endures, and as long as there are
Scotsmen with warm blood coursing in their veins, they will never cease
to exult at the name Bannockburn! Thirty thousand English fell upon
the field. Twenty-seven barons and two hundred knights, and seven
hundred squires were lying in the dust, and twenty-two barons and sixty
knights were prisoners. Never was there a more crushing defeat.
{269}
Still England refused to acknowledge the independence of the kingdom,
and Bruce crossed the border with his army. The Pope was appealed to
by Edward, and issued a pacifying bull in 1317, addressed to "Edward,
King of England," and "the noble Robert de Bruis, conducting himself as
King of Scotland." Bruce declined to accept it until he was addressed
as King of Scotland, and then proceeded to capture Berwick. The
Scottish Parliament sent an address to the Pope, from which a few
interesting extracts are here made:
"It has pleased God to restore us to liberty, by one most valiant
Prince and King, Lord Robert, who has undergone all manner of toil,
fatigue, hardship, and hazard. To him we are resolved to adhere in all
things, both on account of his merit, and for what he has done for us.
But, if this Prince should leave those principles he has so nobly
pursued, and consent that we be subjected to the King of England, we
will immediately expel him as our enemy, and will choose another king,
for as long as one hundred of us remain alive, we will never be subject
to the English. For it is not glory, nor riches, {270} nor honor, but
it is liberty alone, that we contend for, which no honest man will lose
but with his life."
The spirit manifested in this had its effect, and the Pope consented to
address Bruce by his title, "King of Scotland." After delaying the
evil day as long as possible, England at last, in 1328, concluded a
treaty recognizing Scotland as an independent kingdom, in which
occurred these words: "And we renounce whatever claims we or our
ancestors in bygone times have laid in any way over the kingdom of
Scotland."
Concerning the character of Robert Bruce, historians are not agreed.
To fathom his motives would have been difficult at the time; how much
more so then after six centuries. We only know that he leaped into an
arena from which nature and circumstances widely separated him, gave a
free Scotland to her people, and made himself the hero of her great
epic.
When we see the spiritless sons of Bruce in the hands of base
intriguing nobles, trailing their great inheritance in the mire, we
exclaim: Was it for this that there was such magnificent heroism? Was
it worth seven {271} years of such struggle to emancipate the land from
a foreign tyranny, only to have it fall into a degrading domestic one?
But the reassuring fact is, that the governing power of a nation is
only an incident, more or less imperfect. The life is in the people.
There was not a cottage nor a cabin in all of Scotland that was not
ennobled by the consciousness of what had been done. Men's hearts were
glad with a wholesome gladness; and every child in the land was lisping
the names of Wallace and of Bruce and learning the story of their
deeds. But for all that, the period following the death of the great
King and Captain is a disappointing one, and we are not tempted to
linger while the incapable David II. wears his father's crown, and
while the son of Baliol, instigated by England, is troubling the
kingdom, and even having himself crowned at Scone; and while Edward
III., until attracted by more tempting fields in France, is invading
the land and recapturing its strongholds. The limit of humiliation
seems to be reached when David II., in the absence of an heir, proposes
to leave his throne to Lionel, son of Edward III.!
When Robert Bruce bestowed his {272} daughter, Marjory, upon the High
Steward of Scotland, he determined the course of history in two
countries; in England even more than in Scotland. The office of
Steward was the highest in the realm. Since the time of David I. it
had been hereditary in one family, and according to a prevailing
custom, to which many names now bear testimony, the official
designation had become the family name. The marriage of Robert Stewart
(seventh High Steward of his house) to Marjory Bruce was destined to
bear consequences involving not alone the fate of Scotland, but leading
to a transforming revolution and the greatest crisis in the life of
England. As the Weird Sisters promised to Banquo, this Stewart was "to
be the fader of mony Kingis," for Marjory was the ancestress of
fourteen sovereigns, eight of whom were to sit upon the throne of
Scotland, and six upon those of both England and Scotland (1371 to
1714, three hundred and forty-three years).
Marjory's son, Robert II., the first of the Stuart kings, was crowned
at Scone in 1371. His natural weakness of character made him the mere
creature of his determined and {273} ambitious brother, the Duke of
Albany, who, in fact, held the state in his hand until far into the
succeeding reign of Robert III., which commenced in 1390. The nobles
had now established a ruinous ascendancy in the state, and so abject
had the King become, that Robert III. was paying annual grants to the
Duke of Albany and others for his safety and that of his heir. In
spite of this, his eldest son, Rothesay, was abducted by Albany and the
Earl of Douglas, and mysteriously died, it is said of starvation. The
unhappy King then sent Prince James, his second son, to France for
safety; but he was captured by an English ship by the way, and lodged
in the Tower of London by Henry IV. When Robert III. died immediately
after of a broken heart, the captive Prince was proclaimed king (1406),
and his uncle, the Duke of Albany, the next in royal succession, ruled
the kingdom in name, as he had for many years in fact.
There existed between France and Scotland that sure bond of friendship
between nations--a common hatred. This had given birth to a political
alliance which was to be a thorn in the side of England for many {274}
years. French soldiers and French gold strengthened Scotland in her
chronic war with England, and in return the Scots sent their soldiers
to the aid of the Dauphin of France. It was this which gave such value
to the royal prisoner. He could be used by Henry IV. to restrain the
French alliance, and also to keep in check the ambitious Duke of
Albany, by the fact that he could in an hour reduce him to
insignificance by restoring James to his throne.
Such were some of the influences at work during the eighteen years
while the Scottish Prince with keen intelligence was drinking in the
best culture of his age, and at the same time studying the superior
civilization and government of the land of his captivity. He seems to
have studied also to some effect the affairs of his own kingdom. He
was released in 1424, crowned at Scone, and a new epoch commenced. He
had resolved to break the power of the nobles, and with extraordinary
energy he set about his task! There was a long and unsettled account
with his own relatives. He knew well who had humiliated and broken his
father's heart, and starved to death his brother Rothesay, {275} and,
as he believed, had also conspired with Henry IV. for his own capture
and eighteen years' captivity. The old conspirator who had been the
chief author of these things had recently died, but his son wore his
title. So the Duke of Albany (the King's cousin) and a few of the most
conspicuous of the conspirators were seized, tried, and one after
another five of the King's kindred died by the axe, in front of
Stirling Castle. It was one of those outbursts of wrath after a long
period of wrongdoing, terrible but wholesome. An unscrupulous nobility
had wrenched the power from the Crown, and it must be restored, or the
kingdom would perish. This disease, common to European monarchies,
could only be cured by just such a drastic remedy; successfully tried
later in France, by Louis XI. (fifteenth century), by Ivan the Terrible
in Russia (sixteenth century), and by slower methods accomplished in
England, commencing with William the Conqueror, and completed when
great nobles were cringing at the feet of Henry VIII. There are times
when a tyrant is a benefactor. And when a centralized, or even a
despotic, monarchy {276} supplants an oligarchy, it is a long step in
progress.
This ablest of the Stuart kings was assassinated in 1437 by the enemies
he had shorn of power, his own kindred removing the bolts to admit his
murderers. He was the only sovereign of the Stuart line who inherited
the heroic qualities of his great ancestor Robert Bruce, a line which
almost fatally entangled England, and sprinkled the pages of history
with tragedies, four out of the fourteen dying violent deaths, two of
broken hearts, while two others were beheaded.
It is a temptation to linger for a moment over the personal traits of
James I. We shall not find again among Scottish kings one who is
possessed of "every manly accomplishment," one who plays upon the
organ, the flute, the psaltery, and upon the harp "like another
Orpheus," who draws and paints, is a poet, and what all the world
loves--a lover. It was his pure, tender, romantic passion for Lady
Jane Beaufort, whom he married, just before his return to his kingdom,
which inspired his poem, "The Kingis Qahaiir" (the King's book), a work
{277} never approached by any other poet-king, and which marked a new
epoch in the history of Scottish poetry. It is the story of his life
and his love--a fantastic mingling of fact and allegory after the
fashion of Chaucer and other mediaeval writers. It is pleasant to
fancy that a sympathetic friendship may have existed between the
unfortunate youth and the warm-hearted, impulsive Prince Hal, who,
immediately upon his accession as Henry V., had James transferred from
the Tower to Windsor. There it was he spent the last ten years of his
captivity, there he met Lady Jane Beaufort, and wrote a great part of
his poem.
The turbulence which had been checked by the splendid energy of James
I., revived with increased fury after his death. The fifty years in
which James II. and James III. reigned, but did not govern, is a
meaningless period, over which it would be folly to linger. If it had
any purpose it was to show how utterly base an unpatriotic feudalism
could become--Douglases, Crawfords, Livingstons, Crichtons, Boyds, like
ravening beasts of prey tearing each other to pieces, and trying to
outwit by perfidy when {278} force failed; Livingstons holding the
infant King, James II., a prisoner in Stirling Castle, of which they
were hereditary governors, and together with the Crichtons entrapping
the young Earl of Douglas and his brother by an invitation to dine, and
then beheading them both--so that it is with satisfaction we learn of
the King's reaching his majority and beheading a half-score of
Livingstons at Edinburgh Castle! Then to the Douglases is traced every
disorder in the realm, and with relief we hear of their disgrace and
banishment, only to have the Boyds come upon the scene with a villanous
conspiracy to seize the young King, James III., they, after rising to
power, swiftly and tragically to fall again. History could not afford
a more shameful and senseless display of depravity than in these human
vultures. A Scottish writer says: "There was nothing but slaughter in
this realm, every party lying in wait for another, as they had been
setting tinchills (snares) for wild beasts."
In viewing this raging storm of anarchy one wonders what had become of
the people. We hear nothing of them. They had no political influence,
and if they had {279} representatives in Parliament, they were dumb,
for the voice of the Commons was never heard. But there is reason to
believe that, in spite of the ferocious feudal and social anarchy, the
urban population and the peasantry were groping their way into a higher
civilization. That better ways of living prevailed we may infer from
sumptuary laws enacted by James III., and in the founding of three
universities (St. Andrew's, 1411, Glasgow, 1450, and Aberdeen, 1494)
there is sure indication that beneath the turbid political surface
there flowed a stream of intellectual life. From these literary
centres "learned Scotsmen" began to swarm over the land, and a solid
scholarship was the aim of ambitious youths, who found in that the road
to posts of distinction once won only by arms. There was a small body
of national literature. Barbour's poem, "The Brus," led the way in the
fourteenth century, then King James's poem in the fifteenth, then
Henryson and Boece, and the procession of splendid names had commenced
which was to be joined in later ages by Burns, Scott, and Carlyle.
England had now become the refuge for {280} disgraced and intriguing
nobles. The Duke of Albany, the Earl of Douglas, and others entered
into negotiations with the English King, offering to acknowledge his
feudal superiority, he in return promising to give the crown of
Scotland to Albany. A battle between the English and Scottish forces
took place in the vicinity of Stirling. During the engagement King
James was thrown from his horse and then slain by his miscreant nobles
(1488). The scheme was a failure, and the son of the murdered King was
at once crowned James IV. Henry VII., now King of England, conceived a
plan of cementing friendly relations between the two kingdoms by the
marriage of his daughter, Princess Margaret, with the young King. This
union, so fruitful in consequences, took place at Holyrood in 1502,
amid great rejoicings.
During the two preceding reigns the relations of Scotland with her
great neighbor were comparatively peaceful. But in 1509 Queen
Margaret's brother, Henry VIII., was crowned King of England. Family
ties sat very lightly upon this monarch, and his hostile purposes soon
became apparent, and {281} the friendly relations were broken. A war
between France and England was the signal for a renewal of the old
alliance between the French and the Scots. James himself led an army
against that of his brother-in-law across the Tweed, and at Flodden met
an overwhelming defeat and his own death (1513).
Europe was now unconsciously on the brink of a moral and spiritual
revolution, a revolution which was going to affect no country more
profoundly than Scotland. The Church of Rome, deeply embedded and
wrought into the very structure of every European nation, seemed like a
part of nature. As soon would men have expected to see the foundations
of the continent removed, and yet there was a little rivulet of thought
coursing through the brain of an obscure monk in Germany which was
going to undermine and overthrow it, and cause a new Christendom to
arise upon its ruins. And strangely, too, as if by pre-arrangement,
that wonderful new device--the printing press--stood ready, waiting to
disseminate the propaganda of a Reformed Church!
But kings and nobles went on as before {282} with their absorbing game.
The infant James V. was proclaimed king. The conditions which had
disgraced the minority of his predecessors were repeated, and until he
was eighteen he was virtually a prisoner; then with relentless severity
he turned upon the traitors. The Reformation which was assuming great
proportions was beginning to creep into Scotland. The Catholic King,
with a double intent, placed Primates of the Church in all the great
offices, and the excluded nobles began to lean toward the new faith.
Luther's works were prohibited and stringent measures adopted to drive
heretical literature out of the land. When, for reasons we all know,
Henry VIII. became an illustrious convert to Protestantism, he tried to
bring about a marriage between his nephew, James, and his young
daughter, Princess Mary; at the same time urging his nephew to join him
in throwing off the authority of the Pope. But James made a choice
pregnant with consequences for England. He married, in 1538, Mary,
daughter of the great Duke of Guise in France; thus rejecting the
peaceful overtures of his uncle, Henry VIII., and confirming the French
alliance and {283} the anti-Protestant policy of his kingdom. Henry
was displeased, and commenced an exasperating course toward Scotland.
There was a small engagement with the English at Solway Moss, which
ended in a panic and defeat of the Scots. This so preyed upon the mind
of the King that his spirit seemed broken. The news of the birth of a
daughter--Mary Stuart--came to him simultaneously with that of the
defeat. He was full of vague, tragic forebodings, sank into a
melancholy, and expired a week later (1542). The little Queen Mary at
once became the centre of state intrigues. Henry VIII. secured the
co-operation of disaffected Scotch nobles in a plan to place her in his
hands as the betrothed of his son, Prince Edward. A treaty of alliance
was drawn and signed, agreeing to the marriage, with the usual
condition of the feudal lordship of the English King over Scotland.
The Scottish Parliament, through the efforts of Cardinal Beaton,
rejected the proposal, and the furious Henry declared war, with
instructions to sack, burn, and put to death without mercy, Cardinal
Beaton's destruction being especially enjoined. The Cardinal, in the
{284} meantime, was trying to stamp out the Reform-fires which were
spreading with extraordinary swiftness. There were executions and
banishments. Wishart, the Reformer and friend of John Knox, was burned
at the stake. Following this there was a conspiracy for the death of
the Cardinal, who was assassinated, and his Castle of St. Andrew became
the stronghold of the conspirators. John Knox, for his own safety,
took refuge with them, and upon the surrender of the castle to a French
force, Knox was sent a prisoner to the French galleys.
The infant Queen, now six years old, was betrothed to the grandson of
Francis I. and conveyed by Lord Livingston to France for safe-keeping
until her marriage. Her mother, Mary of Guise, was Regent of Scotland,
and doing her best to stem the tide of Protestantism. The spread of
the Reformed faith was amazing. It took on at first a form more
ethical than doctrinal. It was against the immoralities of the clergy
that a sternly moral people rose in its wrath, and, on the other hand,
it was the reading of the Scriptures, and interpreting them without
authority, for which men were condemned to the {285} stake, their
accusers saying, "What shall we leave to the bishops to do, when every
man shall be a babbler about the Bible?" Carlyle says the Reformation
gave to Scotland a soul. But it might have fared differently had not a
co-operating destiny at the same time given Scotland a John Knox! Knox
was to the Reformed Church in Scotland what the body of the tree is to
its branches. He not only poured his own uncompromising life into the
branches, but then determined the direction in which they should
inflexibly grow. Knox had been the friend and disciple of Calvin in
Geneva. The newly awakened soul in Scotland fed upon the theology of
that great logician as the bread of heaven, and Calvinism was forever
rooted in the hearts and minds of the people.
The marriage of Queen Mary with the Dauphin had been quickly followed
by the death of Henry II., and her young consort was King of France.
Queen Elizabeth, in response to an appeal from the Reformed Church,
sent a fleet and soldiers to meet the powerful French force which would
now surely come. But the reign of Francis {286} II. was brief. In
1560 tidings came that he was dead. Mary now resolved to return to her
own kingdom. Elizabeth tried to intercept her by the way, but she
arrived safely and was warmly welcomed. She was nineteen, beautiful,
gifted, rarely accomplished, had been trained in the most brilliant and
gayest capital in Europe, and was a fervent Catholic. She came back to
a land which had by Act of Parliament prohibited the Mass and adopted a
religious faith she considered heretical, and a land where
Protestantism in its austerest form had become rooted, and where John
Knox, its sternest exponent, held the conscience of the people in his
keeping. What to her were only simple pleasures, were to them deadly
sins. When the Mass was celebrated after her return, so intense was
the excitement, the chapel-door had to be guarded, and Knox proclaimed
from the pulpit, that "an army of 10,000 enemies would have been less
fearful to him" than this act of the Queen.
During the winter in Edinburgh the gayeties gave fresh offence. Knox
declared that "the Queen had danced excessively till after midnight."
And then he preached a sermon {287} on the "Vices of Princes," which
was an open attack upon her uncles, the Guises in France. Mary sent
for the preacher, and reproved him for disrespect in trying to make her
an object of contempt and hatred to her people, adding, "I know that my
uncles and ye are not of one religion, and therefore I do not blame
you, albeit you have no good opinion of them." The General Assembly
passed resolutions recommending that it be enacted by Parliament that
"all papistical idolatry should be suppressed in the realm, not alone
among the subjects, but in the Queen's own person." Mary, with her
accustomed tact, replied, that she "was not yet persuaded in the
Protestant religion, nor of the impiety in the Mass. But although she
would not leave the religion wherein she had been nourished and brought
up, neither would she press the conscience of any, and, on their part,
they should not press her conscience."
We cannot wonder that Mary was revolted by the harshness of John Knox;
nor can we wonder that he was alarmed. A fascinating queen, with a
rare talent for diplomacy, and in personal touch with all the Catholic
centres in Europe, was a {288} formidable menace to the Reformed Church
in Scotland, and would in all probability have temporarily overthrown
it, had not the course of events been unexpectedly arrested. Every
Court in Europe was scheming for Mary's marriage. Proposals from
Spain, France, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, and the Earl of Leicester in
England were all considered. Mary's preference was for Don Carlos of
Spain; but when this proved impossible, she made, suddenly, an
unfortunate choice. Henry Stewart, who was Lord Darnley, the son of
the Earl of Lennox, was, like herself, the great grandchild of Henry
VII. That was a great point in eligibility, but the only one. He was
a Catholic, three years younger than herself, good-looking, weak and
vicious. The marriage was celebrated at Holyrood in 1565, and Mary
bestowed upon her consort the title of king. This did not satisfy him.
He demanded that the crown should be secured to him for life; and that
if Mary died childless, his heirs should succeed. With such violence
and insolence did Darnley press these demands, and so open were his
debaucheries, that Mary was revolted and disgusted. Her chief {289}
minister was an Italian named Rizzio, a man of insignificant, mean
exterior, but astute and accomplished. There seems no reason to
believe that Darnley was ever jealous of the Italian, but he believed
that he was an obstacle to his ambitious designs and was using his
influence with Mary to defeat them. He determined to remove him.
While Rizzio and the Queen were in conversation in her cabinet, Darnley
entered, seized and held Mary in his grasp, while his assassins dragged
Rizzio into an adjoining room and stabbed him to death. Who can wonder
that she left him, saying, "I shall be your wife no longer!" But after
the birth of her infant, three months later, her feelings seem to have
softened, and it looked like heroic devotion when she went to his
bedside while he was recovering from small-pox, and had him tenderly
removed to a house near Edinburgh, where she could visit him daily.
It will never be known whether Mary was cognizant of or, even worse,
accessory to Darnley's murder, which occurred at midnight a few hours
after she had left him, February 9, 1567.
{290}
Suspicion pointed at once to the Earl of Bothwell. The Court acquitted
him, but public opinion did not. And it was Mary's marriage with this
man which was her undoing. Innocent or guilty, the world will never
forgive her for having married, three months after her husband's death,
the man believed to be his murderer! Even her friends deserted her. A
prisoner at Lochleven Castle, she was compelled to sign an act of
abdication in favor of her son. A few of the Queen's adherents, the
Hamiltons, Argyles, Setons, Livingstons, Flemings, and others gathered
a small army in her support and aided her escape, which was quickly
followed by a defeat in an engagement near Glasgow. Mary then resolved
upon the step which led her by a long, dark, and dreary pathway to the
scaffold. She crossed into England and threw herself upon the mercy of
her cousin, Elizabeth.
Immediately upon the Queen's abdication her son, thirteen months old,
was crowned James VI. of Scotland. There was a powerful minority which
disapproved of all these proceedings; so now there was a Queen's party,
a King's party, the latter, under the {291} regency of Moray, having
the support of the Reformed clergy. These conditions promised a bitter
and prolonged contest, which promise was fully realized; and not until
1573 was the party of the Queen subdued. During the minority of the
King a new element had entered into the conflict. The Reformation in
Scotland had, as we have seen, under the vigorous leadership of John
Knox, assumed the Calvinistic type. In England, during the reign of
Elizabeth, a more modified form had been adopted--an episcopacy, with a
house of bishops, a liturgy, and a ritual. To the Scotch Reformers
this was a compromise with the Church of Rome, no less abhorrent to
them than papacy. The struggle resolved itself into one between the
advocates of these rival forms of Protestantism, each striving to
obtain ascendancy in the kingdom, and control of the King. Some of the
most moderate of the Protestants approved of restoring the
ecclesiastical estate which had disappeared from Parliament with the
Reformation, and having a body of Protestant clergy to sit with the
Lords and Commons. These questions, of such vital moment to the
consciences of many, were to others merely a cloak for {292} personal
ambitions and political intrigues. When James was seventeen years old,
the method already so familiar in Scotland, was resorted to. In order
to separate him from one set of villanous plotters, he was entrapped by
another by an invitation to visit Ruthven Castle, where he found
himself a prisoner, and when the plot failed, the Reformed clergy did
its best to shield the perpetrators, who had acted with their knowledge
and consent.
But James had already made his choice between the two forms of
Protestantism, and the basis of his choice was the sacredness of the
royal prerogative. A theology which conflicted with that, was not the
one for his kingdom. He would have no religion in which presbyters and
synods and laymen were asserting authority. The King, God's anointed,
was the natural head of the Church, and should determine its policy.
Such was the theory which even at this early time had become firmly
lodged in the acute and narrow mind of the precocious youth, and which
throughout his entire reign was the inspiration of his policy. In the
proceedings following the "Ruthven Raid," as it is {293} called, he
openly manifested his determination to introduce episcopacy into his
kingdom.
So the conflict was now between the clergy and the Crown. The latter
gained the first victory. Parliament, in 1584, affirmed the supreme
authority of the King in all matters civil and religious. The act
placed unprecedented powers in his hands, saying, "These powers by the
gift of Heaven belong to his Majesty and to his successors." And so it
was that in 1584 the current started which, after running its ruinous
course, was to terminate in 1649 in the tragedy at Whitehall. There
was a reaction from the first triumph of divine right, and in 1592 the
Act of Royal Supremacy was repealed, and the General Assembly succeeded
in obtaining parliamentary sanction for the authority of the presbytery.
The Roman Catholic Church, although no longer conspicuous in the arena
of politics, was by no means extinguished in Scotland. Its stronghold
was in the North, among the Highlands, where it is estimated that out
of the 14,000 Catholics in the kingdom, 12,000 were still clinging with
unabated ardor to the {294} old religion. It was this minority, with
many powerful chiefs for its leaders, which looked to Mary as the
possible restorer of the faith; and this was the nursery and the
hatching-ground for all the plots with France or Spain which for twenty
years were leading Mary step by step toward Fotheringay. Whether the
copies of the compromising letters which convicted her of complicity in
these plots would have stood the test of an impartial investigation
to-day we cannot say; but we know that Mary's tarnished name was
restored almost to lustre by the fortitude and dignity with which she
bore her long captivity, and met the moment of her tragic release
(1587). There is something in this story which has touched the
universal heart, and the world still weeps over it. But we do not hear
that it ever cost her son one pang. James was twenty years old when
Elizabeth signed the fatal paper, and if he ever made an effort to save
his mother or shed a single tear over her fate, history does not
mention it. Perhaps it was in recognition of this, or it may have been
in reward for his championship of episcopacy, that Elizabeth made James
her heir and successor. Whatever {295} was the impelling motive, the
protracted struggle between the two nations came to a strange ending;
not the supremacy of an English king in Scotland, as had been so often
attempted, but the reign of a Scottish king in England. Elizabeth died
in 1603, leaving to the son of Mary her crown, and a few days later
James arrived in London, was greeted by the shouts of his English
subjects, and crowned James I., King of England, upon the Stone of
Destiny.
The limits of this sketch do not permit more than the briefest mention
of the period between the union of the crowns, and the legislative
union, a century later, when the two kingdoms became actually one. Its
chief features were the resistance to encroachments upon the polity and
organization of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, the cruelty and
oppressions used by Charles I. to enforce the use of the liturgy of the
Church of England, the formation of the "National Covenant," a sacred
bond by which the Covenanters solemnly pledged an eternal fidelity to
their Church, the alliance between the Scotch Covenanters and English
Puritans, and the consequences to Scotland {296} of the overthrow of
the monarchy by Cromwell. Still later (1689) came the rising of the
Highland chiefs and clans, the Jacobites, as the adherents of the
Stuarts are called, an attempt by the Catholics in the North to bring
about the restoration of the exiled King or his son, the Pretender.
Statesmen in England, and some in Scotland, believed there would be no
peace until the two countries were organically joined. In the face of
great opposition a treaty of union was ratified by the Scottish
Parliament in 1707. The country was given a representation of
forty-five members in the English House of Commons, and sixteen peers
in the House of Lords, and it was provided that the Presbyterian Church
should remain unchanged in worship, doctrine, and government "to the
people of the land in all succeeding generations." With this final Act
the Scottish Parliament passed out of existence.
The wisdom of this measure has been abundantly justified by the
results--a growth in all that makes for material prosperity, a richer
intellectual life, and peace. After centuries of anarchy and misrule
and {297} aimless upheavals, Scotland had reached a haven. Her triumph
has been a moral and an intellectual triumph, not political. In
intellectual splendor her people may challenge the world, and in moral
elevation and in righteousness they will find few peers. But candor
compels the admission that Scotland has no more than Ireland proved
herself capable of maintaining a separate nationality. Without the
excuse of her sister island, never the victim of a foreign conquest,
left to herself, with her own kings and government for nearly a
thousand years, what do we see? A brave, spirited, warlike race with a
passion for liberty dominated and actually effaced by vicious kings,
intriguing regents, and a corrupt nobility; only once, under Wallace
and Bruce, rising to heroic proportions, and then to throw off a
foreign yoke and under leaders who were both of Norman extraction.
Never once were her native oppressors checked or awed; never once did
an outraged people unite under a great political leader; and only one
sovereign after Bruce (James I.) can be said to have had great kingly
qualities. What are we to conclude? {298} Are we not compelled to
believe that Scotland reached her highest destiny when she was joined
to England, and when she bestowed her leaven of righteousness and her
moral strength and the genius of her sons, and received in exchange the
political protection of her great neighbor?
{299}
SOVEREIGNS AND RULERS OF ENGLAND.
ANGLO-SAXON LINE Reign began
A.D.
Egbert ........................................... 800
Ethelwulf ........................................ 836
Ethelbald ........................................ 857
Ethelbert ........................................ 860
Ethelred ......................................... 866
Alfred ........................................... 871
Edward the Elder ................................. 901
Athelstan ........................................ 925
Edmund ........................................... 940
Edred ............................................ 946
Edwy ............................................. 955
Edgar ............................................ 957
Edward the Martyr ................................ 975
Ethelred the Unready ............................. 978
Edmund Ironside .................................. 1016
DANISH LINE
Canute ........................................... 1017
Harold I ......................................... 1030
Hardi Canute ..................................... 1039
SAXON LINE
Edward the Confessor ............................. 1041
Harold II ........................................ 1066
{300}
NORMAN LINE
William I ........................................ 1066
William II ....................................... 1087
Henry I .......................................... 1100
Stephen .......................................... 1135
PLANTAGENET LINE
Henry II ......................................... 1154
Richard I ........................................ 1189
John ............................................. 1199
Henry III ........................................ 1216
Edward I ......................................... 1272
Edward II ........................................ 1307
Edward III ....................................... 1327
Richard II ....................................... 1377
HOUSE OF LANCASTER
Henry IV ......................................... 1399
Henry V .......................................... 1413
Henry VI ......................................... 1422
HOUSE OF YORK
Edward IV ........................................ 1461
Edward V ......................................... 1483
Richard III ...................................... 1483
HOUSE OF TUDOR
Henry VII ........................................ 1485
Henry VIII ....................................... 1509
Edward VI ........................................ 1547
Mary ............................................. 1553
Elizabeth ........................................ 1558
STUART LINE
James I .......................................... 1603
Charles I ........................................ 1625
THE COMMONWEALTH
1649-1660
{301}
STUART LINE
Charles II ....................................... 1660
James II ......................................... 1685
HOUSE OF ORANGE
William and Mary ................................. 1688
STUART LINE
Anne ............................................. 1702
BRUNSWICK LINE
George I ......................................... 1714
George II ........................................ 1727
George III ....................................... 1760
George IV ........................................ 1820
William IV ....................................... 1830
Victoria ......................................... 1837
Edward VII ....................................... 1901
BEGINNING OF SCOTTISH KINGDOM UNDER KENNETH MACALPINE,
AFTER UNION OF PICTS AND SCOTS
Began to Reign
A.D.
Kenneth II ....................................... 836
Union with the Picts ............................. 843
Donald V ......................................... 854
Constantine II ................................... 858
Ethus ............................................ 874
Gregory .......................................... 875
Donald VI ........................................ 892
Constantine III .................................. 903
Malcolm I ........................................ 943
Indulfus ......................................... 952
Duff ............................................. 961
{302}
Culenus .......................................... 966
Kenneth III ...................................... 970
Constantine IV ................................... 994
Grimus ........................................... 996
Malcolm II ....................................... 1004
Duncan I ......................................... 1034
Macbeth .......................................... 1040
Malcolm III ...................................... 1057
Donald VII ....................................... 1093
Duncan II ........................................ 1094
Edgar ............................................ 1098
Alexander I ...................................... 1107
David I .......................................... 1124
Malcolm IV ....................................... 1153
William .......................................... 1165
Alexander II ..................................... 1214
Alexander III .................................... 1249
INTERREGNUM
John Baliol ...................................... 1293
Robert I (Bruce) ................................. 1306
David II ......................................... 1330
Edward Baliol .................................... 1332
Robert II ........................................ 1370
Robert III ....................................... 1390
INTERREGNUM
HOUSE OF STUART
James I .......................................... 1424
James II ......................................... 1437
James III ........................................ 1460
James IV ......................................... 1489
James V .......................................... 1514
Mary Stuart ...................................... 1544
Mary and }
Henry Stuart } jointly .......................... 1565
James VI ......................................... 1567
{303}
INDEX.
ENGLAND
Abelard, 53
Act of Supremacy, 84
Addison, 135
Agincourt, 65
Agricola, 13
Albert, Prince of Saxe-Coburg, 159, 171
Alfred, King, 27, 40
Anglo-Saxons, 15-20, 22, 39
Anne Boleyn, 75, 77
Anne, of Cleves, 78
Anne, Queen of England, 131, 135
Anselm, 38
Antoninus, 14
Aquitaine, 65
Army Plot, 116
Arthur, King, 16
Arthur, Prince 48
Atlantic Cable, 169
Bacon, Francis, 95, 100
Bacon, Roger, 53
Bæda, 27
Balaklava, Battle of, 163
Bank of England, 130
Bannockburn, Battle of, 56
Basques, 10
Bayeux Tapestry, 33
Bedford, Duke of, 65
Bible, 101
Bill of Rights, 127
Black Death, 58
Black Prince, 58
Blenheim, Battle of, 133
Boadicea, 11
Bosworth, Battle of, 71
Bothwell, 93
Boyne, Battle of, 127
Bright, John, 160, 171
British Association, 27
Britons, 10, 14, 20
Bruce, Robert, 56
Bruno, 86
Buddha, 193
Buller, General, 185
Bunker Hill, 148
Bunyan, 124
Burke, 145, 149
Burney, Frances, 153
Burns, 153
Byron, 154
Cade, Jack, 66
Cædmon, 26
Cæsar, 11
Calais, 81
Calcutta, Black Hole of, 140
Calvin, 84
Canada, 140, 143
Canning, 149
Canterbury, 25, 45
Canterbury, Archbishop of, 44
Canute, 31
Cape of Good Hope, 172
Caroline, of Brunswick, 156
Caroline, Queen, 138
Catharine de Medici, 91
Catholicism, Roman Church, 25, 63, 74-79, 83, 99, 123
Cavaliers, 123, 137
Cawnpore, Massacre at, 166
Caxton, 71
Cerdic, 19-22
Charles I, 102, 118
Charles II, 121, 123
Charles V, 74
Charles VII, 65
Charlotte, Princess, 156
Chaucer, 60
Christianity, 18, 23, 26
Chronicle, 149
Church of England, 76, 83
Churchill, John, 132
Circuits, 45
Clarence, Duke, 62
Claudius, 11
Clive, 140
Cobden, Richard, 160
Coleridge, 149, 153
Colonies, The Thirteen, 145
Commonwealth, 119
Conservatives, 137, 157
Constance, of Brittany, 48
Cook, Captain, 143
Cornwallis, Lord, 148
Court of Appeals, 45
Cowper, 153
Crécy, Battle of, 57
Crimean War, 162
Cromlechs, 9
Cromwell, Oliver, 117, 119
Cromwell, Thomas, 77
Cronje, General, 185-191
Crusades, 42, 47
Culloden Moor, 139
Daguerre, 169
Danes, 30
Darnley, Lord, 93
Defoe, 135
De Wet, 189
Dickens, 170
Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), 160, 171
Domesday Book, 36
Drake, Sir Francis, 94
Dufferin, 187
Duncan, 31
Dutch East India Co., 172
East India Co., 89, 140, 149, 173
Edict of Nantes, 173
Education Bill, 195
Edward "the Confessor," 32
Edward I, 54
Edward II, 56
Edward III, 56, 62, 66
Edward IV, 68
Edward V, 70
Edward VI, 78, 79
Edward VII, 191
Edward, of York, 67
Edward, Prince of Wales, 68
Edwin, 26
Egbert, 23
Elizabeth, 80, 82
Erasmus, 71
Escurial, 86
Exeter, Duke of, 69
Exposition, 169
Fawkes, Guy, 99
Feudalism, 34, 66, 69
Fielding, 135
Flodden Field, 91
Florida, Cession of, 141
Fox, 145, 148, 149
Franchise, 184
Francis I, 74
Frith-Gilds, 40
Fulton, 154
Gage, General, 147
Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, 43
Geoffrey, Prince, 48
George I, Elector of Hanover, 135, 138
George II, 138
George III, 143, 146, 151
George IV, 155
George, Prince of Denmark, 134
Gilds, 40
Gladstone, 171
Godwin, 32
Goldsmith, 153
Grand Alliance, 131, 132
Grand Lama, 193
Great Britain, 101
Great Trek, 175
Gregory, Pope, 24
Grey, Lady Jane, 79
Guise, House of, 92, 102, 123
Guise, Mary, 91
Gunpowder Plot, 99
Habeas Corpus, 123, 124
Hadrian, 14
Hampden, John, 106, 112, 116
Hanover, House of, 135
Harold, 32, 33, 38
Hastings (Senlac), Battle of, 33
Hastings, Warren, 149
Havelock, General, 167
Hengest, 22
Henrietta, of France, 103
Henry I, 42
Henry II, 44
Henry III, 51
Henry IV, 63
Henry V, 64
Henry VI, 68
Henry VII, 71
Henry VIII, 73-79
Henry Tudor, 71
High Commission Court, 115
Hinterland, 176
Horsa, 22
House of Commons, 54, 63, 87, 119, 156
Howard, John, 153
Howard, Katharine, 78
Huguenots, 89, 173, 186
Hundred Years' War, 65
Iberians, 10
India, 140, 143, 164, 168
India, Viceroy of, 192-193
Ireland, 154, 159, 194
Jackson, General Andrew, 151
James I, of England, 96, 99, 102
James II, 123, 125
James IV, of Scotland, 90
James V, of Scotland, 91
James VI, of Scotland, 94
Jameson Raid, 182, 183
Jamestown, Virginia, 99
Jeffries, Chief Justice, 124
Jew, 36, 51, 53, 55
Joan of Arc, 65
John, Prince, 46
John of Gaunt, 62
Johnson, 153
Joubert, General, 185
Jutes, 22
Kaffir, 188
Katharine, Princess of Aragon, 73
Katharine, Princess, 65
Kelt, 20
Keltic-Aryans, 9
Keltic-Britons, 13, 55
Keltic-Gauls, 13
King's Court, 42, 45
Knox, John, 94
Kruger, Paul Stephanus, 177
Lancaster, Duke of, 62
Lancaster, House of, 62, 67, 71
Laud, Archbishop, 103, 111, 115
Leicester, Earl of, 95
Lexington, Battle of, 148
Lhassa, 193
Liberals, 137, 157
Lionel of York, 67
Lollards, 64
London, 11, 12, 35
Long Parliament, 114-120
Louis XIV, 126
Loyalists, 114
Luther, 74
Magna Charta, 49
Margaret, Princess, 90
Marlborough, Lord, 132
Mary Stuart, 81, 89, 96
Mary Tudor, 80
Massachusetts Charter, 107, 147
Massacre of St. Bartholomew's, 89
Matilda, 43
Mayflower, 98
Merchant Co., 89, 140
Metabeli, 178
Methodism, 141
Milner, Sir Alfred, 184
Milton, 124
Monopolies, 112
Montcalm, 140
More, Sir Thomas, 73, 95
Mortimer, 56
Motley, John, 186
Napoleon Bonaparte, 150
Naseby, Battle of, 117
Natal, 178
Netherlands, 186
New England, 98
Newton, 124
Nightingale, Florence, 164
Nonconformists, 195
Normandy, 42
North, Lord, 148
Northmen, 30
O'Connell, Daniel, 155
Opus Maius, 53
Orange Free State, 175, 179
Orleans, Battle of, 65
Ouck, Kingdom of, 165
Oxford, 52, 54, 59, 71
Parliament, 54, 62, 69, 88, 105
Parr, Katharine, 78
Peel, Sir Robert, 155
Petition of Right, 106, 127
Philip II, of Spain, 80, 85
Picts, 13, 14, 23
Pitt, William, 142, 145
Plantagenet, 44, 58
Plymouth, 99
Popular Sovereignty, 196
Presbyterianism, 114
Pretender, 131, 137
Pretender, the Young, 139
Protectorate, 119
Protestantism, 76, 83, 103, 121
Puritans, 84, 98, 104, 124
Pym, 104, 114, 116
Quebec, Battle of, 144
Railway, 154
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 89, 101
Reform Act, 156
Reformation, 75, 83
Rhodes, Cecil, 183
Richard I, "Coeur de Lion," 47
Richard II, 58
Richard, Duke of York, 62, 67, 70
Richard, Duke of Gloucester, 70
Robert, Prince, 42
Roberts, General, 185
Robsart, Amy, 95
Romans, 11-16
Roundheads, 123, 137
Royalists, 113
Royal Society, 27
Russia, 160
Salisbury Plain, 10, 37
Scotland, 55, 90, 114
Scots, 13, 14
Scott, 153
Sepoy Rebellion, 165
Seven Years' War, 139
Severus, 14
Seymour, Jane, 78
Shelley, 154
Sheridan, 149, 153
Ship Money, 112, 146
Sidney, Sir Philip, 86
Simon de Montfort, 54
Solway Moss, 91
South Sea Bubble, 138
Southey, 153
Spanish Armada, 94
Spectator, 135
Spenser, 86
Stamp Act, 145
Star Chamber, 110, 115, 120
Statute of Heresy, 63
St. Bartholomew's Eve, 89
Steane, 135
Steele, 135
Stephen, King, 43
Stephenson, George, 154
Stonehenge, 10, 35
Strafford, Earl, 110, 114
Stuart, Charles Edward, 139
Stuart, House of, 91, 97, 123, 125, 139
Suez Canal, 171
Supremacy, Oath of, 155
Suzerainty, 180, 184
Sweyn, 31
Swift, 135
Sydenham Palace, 169
Tax on Tea, 146
Tennyson, 169
Thackeray, 169
Thomas à Becket, 44
Three Years' War, 189
Tibet, 192
Times, 149
Tory, 125, 132, 136, 146
Transvaal Republic, 178, 179, 180, 182
Tudor, House of, 71
Tyler, Wat, 58
Uitlanders, 182
United States, 149, 150
Victor, Prince, 187
Victoria, Accession of, 159
Virginia, Colonization of, 89
Wales, 55
Wales, Prince of, 55
Walpole, Horace, 153
Walpole, Robert, 136, 138
War of 1812 with United States, 150
Wars of the Roses, 62, 67
Warwick, Earl of, 66, 67
Washington, George, 148
Waterloo, 150
Watt, James, 150
Wellington, Duke of, 150, 154
Wentworth, Sir Thomas, 110
Wesley, John, 141
Westminster Abbey, 55
Whig, 125, 132, 136
White Ship, 43
Wickliffe, 59, 64
Wilberforce, 158
William the Conqueror, 32
William, Prince of Orange, 125, 128, 130, 137
William Rufus, 41
William IV, 156, 159
Witenagemot, 29
Wolfe, 140
Wolsey, Chancellor, 74
Yangtse Valley, 194
York, House of, 68
York, Princess Elizabeth of, 71
SCOTLAND
Aberdeen, University of, 297
Act of Royal Supremacy, 293
Agricola, 249
Albany, Duke of, 273, 274, 280
Alexander III, 258
Angles, 251
Annandale, Earl of, 264
Argyle, 251
Assembly, General, The, 287
Ayr, 268
Baliol, 258, 259, 262
Bannockburn, 268
Beaton, Cardinal, 283
Beaufort, Lady Jane, 276
Berwick, 268, 269
Birnam, 254
Boece, 252, 279
Bothwell, Earl of, 290
Boyds, 278
Bruce, 258, 262-271, 276, 296
Bruce, Marjory, 272
Bruis, Robert de, 261
Canmore, 254
Catholic Church, 267, 287, 293, 296
Comyn, 266
Covenanters, 295
Crichtons, 277, 278
Cromwell, 296
Danes, 251
Darnley, 288
David I, King, 258, 264
David II, 271
Donegal, 250
Douglas, Earl of, 273, 278, 280
Duncan, 251, 254
Dundee, 262
Dunsinnane, 254
Edgar the Atheling, 255
Edward I of England, 258, 261
Edward III of England, 271
Elizabeth, Queen, 285, 290, 295
Falkirk, 262
Fergus, 250, 252
Flodden, 287
Glasgow, 262, 279, 290
Grampians, 260
Guise, Mary of, 282, 284
Henry II of England, 257
Henry IV, 273, 274
Henry V, 277
Henry VII, 280
Henry VIII, 280, 282
Henryson, 279
Holyrood, 280, 288
Iona, Monastery at, 250
Jacobites, 297
James, Prince, 273, 274
James I, 276, 277
James II, 278
James III, 278, 280
James IV, 280
James V, 282
James VI, 290
James I of England, 295
John I, 259-261
Knox, John, 284, 286
Lamberton, Bishop of, 266
Lennox, Earl of, 288
Lionel, Prince, 272
Livingston, 278, 284
Lochleven Castle, 290
Lothian, 251
Luther, 282
Macbeth, 252, 254
Maid of Norway, 258
Malcolm II, 251
Malcolm III, 254, 256
M'Alpin, Kenneth, 251
Margaret, 255
Margaret, Princess, 280
Mary, Princess, 282
Moray, 291
National Covenanters, 295
Normans, 256, 296
Parliament, Scottish, 260, 269, 279, 283, 291, 296
Pembroke, Earl of, 268
Picts, 249, 251
Presbyterian Church, 293, 296
Pretender, The, 296
Protestantism, 286
Puritans, 295
Reformation, 282, 291
Reformed Church, 281, 285, 288, 291
Richard I, 257
Rizzio, 289
Robert II, 272
Robert III, 273
Rothesay, 273, 274
Ruthven Raid, 292
Scone, 251, 254, 259, 274
Scots, 249
Solway Moss, 283
St. Andrew's University, 279
St. Columba, 250
St. Nimian, 250
Steward, High, of Scotland, 272
Stewart, Robert, 272
Stirling, 262, 268, 275
Stone of Destiny, 250, 261, 295
Stuart, Mary, 283, 286, 288, 295
Stuarts, 272, 276, 296
Tay, River, 251
Tweed, 251, 281
William the Lion, 257
William Wallace, 261, 265, 296
Wishart, 284
IRELAND
Act of Settlement, 221
Act of Uniformity, 210
Act of Union, 238, 241
Ard Reagh, 201
Armagh, 214
Bard, 202
Bowes, Lord Chancellor, 226
Boyne, Battle of, 223
Brefny, Lord of, 204
Brehon Law, 202, 205
Brehons, 202
Brian Boru, 204
Cæsair, Lady, 199
Catholic Church, 210, 221-227, 233, 239-241, 244
Cavendish, Lord Frederick, 245
Celts, 201
Charles I, 213, 215
Charles II, 216, 218-221, 228
Christianity, 202-203
Church of England, 213
Clan, 201
Connaught, 201, 212, 216
Crécy, 208
Cromlechs, 201
Cromwell, 216
Crosby, Sir Francis, 212
Curran, Sarah, 239
Danes, 204, 205
Declaration of Rights, 234
Dermot, 204
Desmond, House of, 207, 211, 212
Desmond Rebellion, 211
Dillon, 242
Dublin, 205, 209
Edward III, 208
Elizabeth, Queen, 210
Emmet, Robert, 239
Enniskillen, 222
Eric, 202
Erin, 200
Famine in Ireland, 241
Fenians, 244
Fenius, 200
Fitzgerald, 237
Flood, Henry, 232, 237
Gael, 199
Gaelic, 200
Geraldines, 207, 209, 237
Geraldine League, 211
Ginkel, 223
Gladstone, 244, 245
Godfrey, Sir Edward Bery, 219
Grattan, Henry, 232, 237
Great Rebellion, The, of 1690, 224
Heber, 199, 200
Henry II, 204-206
Henry VII, 209
Henry VIII, 209
Heremon, 200
Hibernia, 200
Home Rule, 244
Home Rule Act, 245
Irish Parliament, 209, 213, 221, 234, 235, 238
James II, 221-222
Kildare, Earl of, 210
Kildare, House of, 207, 212
Kilkenny, Statutes of, 208, 210, 232
Laud, Archbishop, 213, 215
Leinster, 201, 204
Liberals, 244
Limerick, 223
Limerick, Articles of, 223
Locke, 230
London, 210
Londonderry, 222
Long Parliament, 214
Louis XIV, 222
Meagher, 242, 247
Meath, 201, 227
Milesius, 199
Mitchell, 242
Molyneux, William, 230, 234
Mountjoy, 213
Mullaghmast, 212
Munster, 201, 212
National Land League, 244
Nemehd, 199
New Land Act, 246
Normans, 206, 209
Oates, Titus, 219
O'Brien, 204, 206
O'Brien, Smith, 242
O'Connell, Daniel, 240
O'Connells, 206
O'Moore, Clan of, 212
O'Neill, Shane the Proud, 211
O'Neills, 206, 209, 210
Ormond, House of, 207, 219, 221
Palatines, 206
Pale, Lords of the, 207, 209, 214
Parnell, Charles, 244
Penal Code, 225
Picts, 200
Pitt, 237
Plunkett, Dr., 220
Popish Plot, 221
Poyning, Sir Edward, 209
Poynings Act, 209, 210, 221, 224, 235
Presbyterians, 214
Protestantism, 210, 214, 215, 219-227, 232
Reformation, 210
Rinucini, 216
Robinson, Chief-Justice, 226
Roman Christianity, 203
Rome, 202
Rory O'Moore, 212
Saarsfield, 223
Scota, 199
Scots, 200
Sept, 201
Shinar, 199
Society of United Irishmen, 236
St. Patrick, 202, 203
Strafford, 213, 215
Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke, 204
Swift, Dean, 231
Tanistry, Law of, 202, 211
Tara in Meath, 201, 204
Thomond, 226
Tone, Wolfe, 236
Tyrone, Earl of, 210, 213, 214
Ulster, 201, 210, 212, 213
Viking, 204
White Boys, 236
William of Orange, 222-225
Wolsey, 209
Young Ireland, 241
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